


A Memory Of The Smell Of Smoke

by commoncomitatus



Category: The New Legends of Monkey (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Episode Related, Gen, Sensory Overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26287435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Set during 2x06-2x07, picking up an hour or so after our heroes reunite. Wherein Sandy is overwhelmed, Tripitaka is trying too hard, Monkey is frustrated, and Pigsy is thwarted at every turn.
Relationships: Sandy/Tripitaka (The New Legends of Monkey)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just a messy little thing, attempting to work through some stuff and ease myself into writing for S2.
> 
> Heavy spoilers for 2x05, 2x06, and 2x07, plus a few references to 2x04.

—

Sandy stares into the fire and breathes and breathes and breathes through her mouth.

 _You’re a demon,_ she reminds herself. _Think like a demon_.

Easily done.

Should be, at least. After a lifetime wearing that name without cause, forced on her by others, it should be as easy as breathing to slip it on now, to become a demon by choice, by design, by—

As easy as breathing, yes. If only she could breathe at all.

Face hidden, body held in absolute stillness, she wraps herself up in the name and guise of a demon. Teeth bared in a sneer even though no-one can see them, she grips the wooden stick until it threatens to splinter, and she pokes at the open fire like it’s an enemy.

Like the boots, forged by a dubious Scroll of Creation, are her enemies too.

Maybe they are, at that. It’s been an hour since Tripitaka threw them away, horrified and disgusted by their effect on her feet. It’s been an hour — and Sandy has barely scrubbed her mind of that particular vision — and still somehow the boots remain exactly as they were before, untouched and unburned.

It’s been an hour, and still—

It’s been an _hour_.

She lets that sit inside of her for a bit: an hour, its sixty little drumbeats kicking in her chest.

An hour sitting in front of the cooking fire, poking at the boots, watching the flames rise and the leather warp.

An hour, breathing through her mouth and unfocusing her eyes, trying not to see, trying to—

Trying to think like a demon.

An hour, and she hasn’t looked up, hasn’t lifted her head, hasn’t moved. Not since Pigsy wandered off by himself, muttering and grumbling about needing to ‘concentrate’ and ‘centre himself’ in readiness to cook for General Khan. Apparently it was a ‘distraction’, the way Sandy kept kicking him in the shins and barking orders so that the soldiers and servants lurking all around them might not realise they’re not who they claim to be.

So that the demons and humans and bodies and _people_ and—

Her breath stutters.

She bares her teeth, hidden along with the rest of her face behind her hair and under her hood. She bares her teeth and sneers and smiles, and she doesn’t look up and she doesn’t look around and she doesn’t move at all except to poke at the fire.

This she does with all the savagery of a demon.

She knows their savagery well; it is no challenge to channel it for herself.

She knows their teeth too. Sharp and pointed and always, always hungry.

Pigsy will have his work cut out for him, cooking for them.

But then, of course, he’s familiar with demon appetites too.

Sandy doesn’t think about that.

She doesn’t let herself wonder if maybe he would have made a more convincing demon here. She, who had their name forced on her, who can barely breathe in this place so full of bodies and noise and chaos; she is ill-equipped to do anything here, least of all bare her teeth and sneer, while he has lived among them just like this before. He knows their ways and their appetites, knows their bodies too, with an intimacy that still turns her stomach.

She doesn’t think about the irony in that.

All those years she spent in hiding, hunted and hated by humans who would call her ‘demon’, and now she has to convince them all, human and demon alike, that she is exactly the monster they always said she was.

She doesn’t think about it.

She sharpens her teeth with her tongue, and she breathes through her mouth, and she pokes at the fire until the flames dance and the embers glow and the little sparks jump up to sting her eyes.

She thinks a demon who spends all her time in a kitchen would relish that.

This, at least, is a feeling she knows well: the kiss of a beloved element. Fire licking a demon’s skin, water bubbling in a god’s veins. Turn it one way or another, the feeling is still the same.

Her breathing comes a little easier.

For a few seconds, at least, it does.

And then—

And then her senses, overloaded and overstimulated in this place that is never quiet or still, catch a sound that matters: the crunch of boots on the soft ground, the cracking of little twigs, the shift in the air that heralds an approaching body.

It is the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth such body to pass her by in the last hour, and just like the first time, the fiftieth, the five-hundredth, every part of her freezes.

Breath, movement, thought: she stops it all.

She listens. She holds herself still. She—

The boots, creaking and still stiff, are new.

The body is not.

Hers, reassured, relaxes just a little.

She doesn’t look up.

She doesn’t need to. She recognises the way Tripitaka lists a little to one side when she’s trying and failing to be stealthy; she recognises the way she churns up the earth when she’s in a hurry. 

She knows the way she walks, the way she moves and stands and breathes.

She knows that it is _her_ , even before she has any direct evidence, even before she clears her throat and announces her presence in that heavy faux-farmer’s accent she’s claimed for her undercover identity.

“Ah... my lady?”

Sandy tests the air, the earth, the world around her. She listens to the rhythm of voices, the rumble of boots, the clang and clamour of weapons and armour and training soldiers. She gauges, in less than a fraction of a second, the exact distance of the nearest twelve demons, the nearest eight humans, the nearest twenty people, bodies, threats. A fraction of a second, and she has gleaned enough to say with confidence:

“It’s only us, Tripitaka.” Hidden safely behind her hair, the demon’s sneer melts into a god’s smile. “You don’t have to call me that.”

She doesn’t look up, but she can feel the air shift as Tripitaka smiles too.

“You see?” she says, keeping her voice sensibly low. “This is why you’re my favourite. Monkey and Pigsy would both jump at the opportunity to make me bow and call them ‘my lord’.”

Sandy’s stomach squirms. She stops smiling, bares her teeth again.

“Monkey and Pigsy both enjoy attention,” she says quietly, and feels the weight of that truth like the weight of all the too-much life thrumming around her, demons and humans and people, their breath on the back of her neck, their bodies pressing too close, their voices ringing out loud and jagged. She breathes through her mouth, gulping down air, and changes the subject: “Your boots are still intact.”

Tripitaka’s sigh cuts through the noise, makes it more bearable. “I can see that.”

“I think,” Sandy says, in rhythm with her breath, “we may need a stronger fire.”

Given where those boots came from — either the Scroll of Creation itself or, more likely, a convincing decoy — she suspects they’ll need rather more than that. But she doesn’t need to see the look on Tripitaka’s face to know that she doesn’t want to hear it, that perhaps it would break her.

Tripitaka blames herself for the mix-up with the scroll, just as she always blames herself for anything that ever goes wrong. Never mind that Sandy and Monkey were there too when she claimed the thing, never mind that Mycelia had them all fooled; Tripitaka carries her name like it makes her responsible for every misfortune that befalls her or those around her.

Sandy couldn’t bear to add yet another misfortune to her load.

Not here, anyway. Not when she herself is in no condition to—

“Maybe it just needs more time,” Tripitaka says, with a high-pitched hopefulness that makes Sandy’s insides clench. “Leave them in there for now, and keep an eye on them.”

As simple as that, yes? Crouch over a fire, watching over a pair of magical, unburning boots, here in the heart of not one but two demon armies, without arousing suspicion.

Sandy wants to laugh, but her breathing is too rapid, too shallow, too—

No.

She lifts her head, forces herself to look Tripitaka in the eye. “I’ll do my best.”

Tripitaka smiles.

And then stops.

Her eyes widen; she starts to stare.

Sandy knows that look, hates that look. She ducks her head again, hides like before and pretends to stoke the fire. Hides, as best she can without turning to mist, but of course it’s too late: Tripitaka has seen her face, has recognised the things that even Sandy cannot hide, and she—

“Are you okay?”

She _cares_.

Sandy doesn’t know if she can bear Tripitaka’s particular brand of caring right now. She’s still not entirely sure that she can bear it most days, even the good ones. Even when she’s not surrounded by demons, even when she’s not pretending to be one herself, even when it hasn’t been hours since she was last able to draw a breath without hearing an echoing one from someone else, somewhere near or not-so-near. Even when—

Even when she’s not _here_.

She swallows, slows her stuttering pulse, and says, “Of course, Tripitaka.”

Tripitaka, as smart as she is small, is of course well and truly unconvinced.

“You look awful.” Head bowed, eyes on the fire, still Sandy can hear the furrowing of her brow, the grinding of wheels in her head. “Pigsy didn’t make you his taste-tester again, did he?”

Sandy manages a breathless chuckle.

“I think we all learned that lesson the last time,” she says, and breathes, and—

And stiffens, automatically, at the crunch of another pair of boots behind her.

She listens.

She hears—

It is the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth body that has passed her by in the last hour. It is the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth time her own body has responded with tension, with fear-horror-dread, with panic swiftly smothered, swallowed down and left to seethe in her stomach because it can’t be seen, because _she_ can’t be seen, because there are so many bodies here, so many humans and demons, so many boots, so much breath, so much, so much, so _much_.

Tripitaka, oblivious with her dulled human senses, leans in a little closer. “Sandy?”

And Sandy wishes she could be.

But they are surrounded by demons, and the body behind her is too close, and she can’t be herself, she can’t be Sandy, shaking and scared and stupid, she has to be a demon, she has to be—

She lurches up to her feet, locking her knees without thought, and she shoves the stick into Tripitaka’s hands and snarls, in her best-worst demon’s voice, “Stoke the fire, human filth!”

Tripitaka’s confusion lasts only a fraction of a second. Her head tilts, the most imperceptible wisp of a nod, and then she bends over her boots with a simpering, “Right away, my lady!”

The name sticks in Sandy’s stomach, sickly-sour. She cannot fathom how Monkey and Pigsy would find joy in such hollow worship, in being the subject of so much attention from other people.

She breathes through her mouth, finds a sneer, and turns.

The sneer comes easily enough, because a demon’s self-righteous disgust is close enough to her own roiling nausea it’s almost not a disguise at all. It comes easily, too, because the source of the disturbance is Quiver, General Khan’s moustachioed little lieutenant, and Sandy’s disdain for him is quite real.

“Yes?” Her voice rises, hardens. She holds on to that, keeps it close like the weapon it is. “What is the matter now, insufferable little moustache man? Can’t you see that we— that _I_ am busy?”

Bent over the fire, Tripitaka stifles a snicker.

Quiver sneers right back at her. He doesn’t like her any better than she likes him, it seems.

This is fine. Sandy can work with that. One demon at a time, one challenge at a time, one—

“Don’t look all that busy to me,” he mutters sourly.

Sandy waves a hand. A little more expansive and flamboyant than she usually would, it is the wave of a culinary artiste, the wave of a high-bred demon who is accustomed — as the little sewer-dwelling god is not — to having all eyes upon her. 

It is also an excellent means of deflecting his attention away from Tripitaka and her unburning boots.

“Well, then,” she says haughtily, “since you are clearly unqualified to recognise such important labour as mine, it is a good thing that _you_ are not the one entrusted with preparing General Khan’s meals.” She looks him dead in the eye; a terror for a socially stunted god like Sandy, but no hardship at all for the demon she is supposed to be. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“Hmph.” Like the snivelling coward he is, he averts his eyes. He makes a show of looking her up and down, a scrawny little scavenger sizing up its prey. “And where’s that little cook slave of yours, huh? Word is, he’s the one with all the talent.”

Sandy grabs a spoon from the cooking pot and holds it up to his throat, wielding it as deftly as she would her scythe, as she would any other weapon. It brings her back to herself, as much as she can afford to be, here in this situation that depends on her being someone else, and it helps her to better block out the chaos all around her, the other bodies lurking nearby, too many and always too close.

“Perhaps,” she says, angling the spoon just so, as if it were a blade, “you should spend less time concerning yourself with other people’s words, and more time doing your own job.”

“Oh, yeah?” His eyes are on the spoon, not her face; Sandy really appreciates that. “Well, maybe _you_ should spend less time... uh... maybe you should... that is, maybe you should just...”

She bares her teeth. _Think like a demon, smile like a demon, become a demon_. A step forward, driving him back: away from the fire, away from the boots, away from Tripitaka.

“Yes?”

Humiliation is an ugly thing on most people, but it is especially unpleasant on demons who believe themselves superior to others of their kind. Quiver’s snarl is a toothless, petty little thing, but it carries a warning behind it: all he needs is one good chance, and it will be his blade at her neck. And he, being a demon in truth, will show considerably less restraint with her than she is showing him right now.

A pointless threat, of course. If Sandy missteps badly enough to give him that chance, she’ll be dead long before he gets to her.

Too many other bodies around. Too many hungry demons looking for a chance to prove themselves against a weaker opponent. Too many human conscripts seeking escape at whatever cost. Too many voices, too many weapons, too many boots and hands, too many—

“Whatever.” This from Quiver, throwing up his hands and bringing her back to the present. “Throw yourself into the fire for all I care. Not my head on the block if you mess it up.”

He shoves the spoon away from his face, spins on his heels, and stalks off, barking orders at his soldiers as he goes, as if he can somehow claw back his dignity by mistreating others.

Sandy watches him go, listening to the pounding of blood in her ears, the thundering of her pulse, the rumble of voices from all around her, amplified as the rest of the camp crashes back into her awareness.

Without even looking around, she can sense at least a dozen pairs of eyes watching her. Assessing, gauging, judging. Some friends of Quiver’s, muttering to themselves about the disrespectful cook; others, opportunistic detractors, happy to see blood spilled in any direction. They’ll grow bored in a few moments, of course, but until they do...

Her pulse quickens. Her chest is too tight.

She breathes through her mouth until it stops heaving, swallows and swallows, and forces herself to look up.

She meets their eyes, each and every one of them, one by one, as a demon would. Holding her body still and steady, holding her eyes open, making them gleam, curling her lips to reveal sharp, hungry teeth. She shows hunger, shows anger, shows violence; she radiates threat, warning, danger.

She breathes, and she holds her head up, and she does not flinch.

Not until they do. Not until they duck their beady demon eyes and turn away. Not until the coast is clear, not until she’s sure she’s safe again, and unobserved.

Not until Tripitaka, peeking up from the fire, whispers, “Sandy?”

Sandy doesn’t answer.

She holds herself still, counting out the spaces between her heartbeats, counting out the moments between her breaths, the flashing lights behind her eyes, the blindness between inhale and exhale. She holds herself still, feeling scorched and violated by the world around her, the soldiers returning to their duties, the cheerful ones and the grumbling ones, the small, the big, the loud, the quiet, the ones with swords or staves or arrows, the ones with broad, bare knuckles, the ones—

Tripitaka’s fingers find hers, squeezing lightly, somehow finding the rapid, ravaged rhythm of her breathing.

“Sandy.”

Sandy nods, and drifts back down into her body: a god’s body, not a demon’s, one without bared teeth, one without a sneer or a snarl or a smirk. It feels oppressive, her skin too tight, her bones too sharp, her organs threatening to strangle her from within.

She feels wrong, she feels vulnerable, she feels scared. But Tripitaka is looking up at her like she needs to know she’s still with her, and so she lets go of the demon’s smile and the demon’s voice, lets go of the still, steady silence, and she breathes through her mouth and tries not to fall over.

“Sorry about that,” she says in a low voice, her own voice.

Tripitaka squeezes her hand again. “We’re all undercover,” she says, gently understanding. “You were just keeping us safe.”

Sandy looks down, takes in Tripitaka’s own disguise: the obedient conscript, the farmer-made-soldier. She does not like that colour on her, deference and obedience and hard physical labour; it makes her want to bare her teeth again for different reasons, makes her want to raise her scythe against anyone who would look at Tripitaka and see something so small and so easily pushed around.

But that is who Tripitaka chose to be, and so she doesn’t.

She takes back the stick, pokes at the fire, hides her face.

Not fast enough.

Tripitaka, watching her far more closely than she should be, says, again, “You really don’t look good.”

“All the better for playing a demon,” Sandy remarks softly.

That’s not what Tripitaka means, though, and Sandy is not naive enough to expect she’ll let it slide now they’re safe. Indeed, the sigh that follows is an unpleasant, accusatory thing; it wriggles its way into Sandy’s chest and makes a home for itself there, rising and falling and rising again in rhythm with her thready, irregular heartbeat.

“I mean it,” Tripitaka presses after a beat. “If you’re sick...”

Sandy rolls her eyes. “If I was, it would only aid our cause.”

A good point, she thinks triumphantly, and one that not even Tripitaka can deny. Few things are capable of wiping out an army more quickly and efficiently than illness, especially the kind that comes from contaminated food. If it really were sickness blanching her skin and dampening her brow with sweat, she could take out Khan and Dreglon’s armies together with one ill-fated meal.

She hasn’t entirely dismissed that possibility.

But not yet. And not now. And not from this.

Tripitaka sighs again, growing frustrated. “So what is it, then? Because you look like...”

And she stops.

Sandy keeps her head down, because she knows that she could not bear to look into Tripitaka’s eyes just now. Keener than even the sharpest sword, more deadly than the quickest arrow, more destructive than even two demon armies, is the look on Tripitaka’s face when she cares, when she worries, when she feels the weight of someone else’s burdens.

So it is, at least, when she feels those things for Sandy, who can no more endure the warmth of another heart than she can endure—

“ _This_ ,” she whispers, and it is a confession and it is a plea and it is, just like this place with all its bodies and its chaos, _too much_.

Tripitaka says, “Oh.”

Sandy wills herself to keep breathing. “There is so much,” she says. “Humans and demons, people of all kinds. Boots and blades and bodies, so many bodies. Fire and smoke and heat, burning for warmth, burning for food, burning my fingers and my face and my insides. Shouting and sweating, blood and bones, and it’s...” She swallows, breathes, swallows, breathes. “It is so _much_ , Tripitaka. It is so much, and I...”

She hasn’t had a moment to herself since they arrived.

She hasn’t had a moment of peace, a moment of quiet.

A moment _alone_.

She is so aware of everything. Every body, every breath. Every drop of sweat, every spark from every fire, every twig snapped under every pair of boots. Every inch of space that is not hers, every word whispered or shouted or screamed, no matter how far away. Every voice, every action, every shift in the earth or the air.

It does not stop.

It is an army—

It is _two_ armies.

And there is no end to it. No end to the busyness, the activity, the movement and the noise, no end to the bodies, with their voices and their sweat and their movement. There is no end to the chaos, the madness, the sensory overload. There is no end to any of it, and it is so much, it is too much, it hurts.

It is a clean-edged razor opening up her nerves, a serrated sword carving up her senses, it is—

Tripitaka shifts closer.

Sandy’s body resists.

Her heart does not.

“It’s hard, I know.” Tripitaka keeps her voice low; it’s a necessity, of course, to keep from being overheard, but to Sandy the softness is a balm. “Being so exposed all the time, so much surrounded, always in danger. It’s hard for all of us.”

Sandy tries to smile. “Even Monkey?”

Tripitaka turns, instinctively seeking him out. Sandy follows the line of her gaze, feels the tension rippling through her body, feels her own respond in kind. It’s not difficult to find: even if his tall, well-built form was hard to miss, which is surely is not, Monkey has never been the type to low and keep himself out of sight.

Even if his life, or theirs, depended on it.

In this case, at least, it’s only partially his fault. Dreglon has him training hard for the upcoming fight against Khan’s champion, raising welts and bruises against some of his toughest conscripts, and between his barked-out orders, Monkey’s cheerful self-congratulations, and the jeers and cheers of the gathering crowd, the noise and clamour is thoroughly inescapable.

It presses on Sandy’s razed senses, like calloused fingers digging into an open, still-bleeding wound.

Tripitaka, no less unhappy about it, lets out a low growl. “I told him to keep a low profile...”

Sandy pats her hand. “Surely that would be like telling Pigsy not to taste-test his own concoctions.”

The comparison is probably not as humourous as she intends, given their particular situation. Pigsy’s life may very well depend upon him taste-testing whatever concoction he’s working on for General Khan, and perhaps the rest of their lives along with his. Admittedly, it may not be the more appropriate moment to try and make light of that, any more than it is a good idea for Monkey to be showing off and throwing his weight around—

Quite literally, going by the _thud_ of a body hitting the ground.

Tripitaka’s face is a thundercloud, white-hot fury seething below the surface like overheated gruel. Bemused and a little afraid, Sandy thinks that Monkey might be better off losing to Khan’s champion, whoever he may be, lest he survive and have to face the wrath of the monk instead.

“I should probably go,” Tripitaka growls, climbing to her feet with a low, frustrated growl. “See if I can rein him in a little bit before he blows his cover and gets us all killed.”

Sandy feels a whimper catch in her throat. She swallows it down, wills herself to keep breathing.

“Be careful,” she pleads, as softly as she can get away with. “If you get yourself into trouble...”

Tripitaka smiles, soft and a little sad. It seems to come harder to her this time, and Sandy has an unpleasant suspicion she only manages it at all for her sake.

“I know, I know.” And then it’s gone, the smile, leaving only the sadness behind. “If I get myself into trouble, you won’t be able to protect me.”

“No.” Sandy furrows her brow, perplexed. “I absolutely _will_ protect you. No matter the cost, no matter that I’d almost certainly get us all killed in the process.”

Tripitaka sighs again. “Sandy...”

“Mm.” She can’t return the smile that came at such cost, not even for Tripitaka’s sake. “But I mean it: I would burn this place to the ground, poison every demon soldier and every human conscript. I would do it. So please, Tripitaka, for all our sakes: try _not_ to get yourself into trouble.”

Tripitaka shakes her head. She’s trying to be annoyed, but Sandy can tell by the way the firelight catches in her eyes that it’s not really working. In spite of herself, no doubt, but nonetheless: she is amused.

It is a triumph Sandy will gladly take.

“No easy task,” Tripitaka remarks, wry but not quite so frustrated now. “Not when Monkey’s involved. But I’ll try my best, okay? You’ve got enough to worry about already without having to keep an eye on me as well.”

This, she punctuates with a pointed glance at the fire, and her scroll-made boots.

Sandy grimaces, but does not complain. Couldn’t, really, even if she had a mind to.

It is not the most pleasant of tasks, presiding over a pair of magical boots in a fire meant for cooking. The smell of leather and smoke and food makes her head spin and her stomach churn — after an hour spent breathing in the stuff, she’s pretty well convinced the scroll’s magic is still spreading its taint — but it is a convenient excuse for her to stay out of the way.

Out of Pigsy’s way, specifically.

It’s no secret that Sandy is the weak link in their little culinary deception, and with his life hanging quite literally on the quality of Khan’s next meal, Sandy doubts he’ll be too upset if she’s kept busy here while he does his work.

Her usefulness, in this as in every other part of her life, lies in keeping her head down, keeping her mouth shut, and keeping her whole self as much out of sight as she can.

It is, she knows, the easiest job.

Easier than Monkey’s, certainly, for all that he seems to be enjoying the attention. Pretending to be human, going toe-to-toe with demons and other humans alike, holding his strength in check even as he depends on it to keep him and all of his friends in one piece... and of all this without the recourse of his staff if he gets into trouble. She knows him well enough by now to guess at how heavily the pretence must be weighing on him.

Sandy could never pretend to be human. She could never pass as something normal.

Instead, she is this: a demon with bared teeth, a demon who plays with fire, a demon who sneers and makes demands and does not cringe or cower from anyone or anything.

It should be easier than it is. It should be second nature. It should—

It should be her _first_ nature.

The cold, calloused cruelty of a demon, the sneer and the smile and the savagery: they saw all of those things in her long before she made the choice to wear them here. This role was hers long before she claimed it; in a way, she’s been practising for it nearly her whole life.

Whether she wanted to or not.

Sandy looks into the fire. Scorching white-yellow, the boots glowing a sickly green in the middle.

Fake boots, forged by a fake scroll.

Fitting that a fake-god playing a fake-demon should be the one to stand watch over them.

“I’ll keep them burning,” she says to Tripitaka. “If it takes all day and all night, I’ll make them burn for you.”

Tripitaka’s gratitude is a radiant, resplendent thing, and it brings Sandy no comfort at all.

“Thanks,” she says. “It means a lot to me.”

Perhaps that’s why it brings no comfort: Sandy can tell that it’s true — deeply and powerfully true — and she doesn’t understand why, or how she could possibly be worthy of such a thing.

Tending a fire, magical or otherwise, is no real labour at all. Especially not compared to the trials ahead for Monkey and Pigsy: whether in the fighting pit or the kitchen, both of their lives hang in the balance. Sandy would not stand a chance in either of those situations, and so she is here instead, poking the fire, dizzy and light-headed from the warped-leather stench, so much aware of the world around her that every breath is a brace against panic.

Hers is no labour; no-one’s life depends on her seeing it through. But still, for all that, Tripitaka is looking at her like she is somehow entrusting her with the most important task of them all. Like these virulent, poisoned boots are somehow an extension of herself, like their fate here means something more than Sandy will ever understand. Like Tripitaka’s life, or perhaps something deeper even than that, rests on this creation being destroyed.

“I don’t understand,” Sandy says.

Tripitaka swallows hard; for a moment, she looks almost as overwhelmed as Sandy feels. “I know.”

And she leans in, pressing against her with every part of her body, like she’s trying to crawl into her chest and hide there.

The contact is terrifying, another surge of sensation against her already fraying senses: it hurts.

But the need to hide, at least, Sandy understands as well as her own heartbeat, and so she stays still, holding Tripitaka as close as she dares in this place where they are so exposed, “I’ll do anything I can for you.”

It is true, of course, for so much more than this. It is true of _everything_ , no matter how overwhelming.

Perhaps Tripitaka understands that, or perhaps she only sees its surface meaning: here and now and these boots that refuse to burn. Whatever she sees, whatever she understands, it doesn’t matter: when she finally drags herself out of Sandy’s arms, she is gleaming, a flame lit up with warmth and real love.

“I know it’s hard,” she whispers. “But it’s only for a little while, okay?”

Sandy doesn’t believe that for a second. Whichever champion wins tonight’s big fight, there will be trouble in store for the other side: if Monkey claims victory for Dreglon there will be hell to pay for Khan’s culinary ‘artistes’, and if Khan’s mysterious champion manages to defeat the human-posing Monkey King then it will be he and Tripitaka who face an uncertain future as her servants.

Either way, they all know there will be no easy escape from this place.

Still, it matters — at least, Sandy thinks it matters — that Tripitaka would attempt the lie just to try and make her feel better.

No-one has ever done that for her before. No-one ever cared that much, no-one ever valued her feelings, no-one has ever—

She thinks it might be comfort, the peculiar warmth that pools in her belly.

She thinks it might be a little bit of something else as well.

It is so strange, the feeling, and so unfamiliar, her body doesn’t know what to do with it. A twist in her gut, a kick behind her ribs, and that soft, sweet sensation is churned up once again into panic.

“Be safe,” she whispers, with urgency. “Please, Tripitaka, please be...”

“I will.” She stretches up, presses a quick kiss to Sandy’s cheek. “You too.”

And then she’s gone, scurrying back to Dreglon’s side of the camp, leaving Sandy alone but not really alone at all.

*

It is all she wants in the whole world: to be alone.

To be at peace, for just a moment, in stillness and silence and solitude.

To breathe easily. Not through her mouth, not choking on panic, not—

Not like this.

Gulping air, like she can swallow down the madness and the chaos of the world around her, like she can smother the countless bodies, silence their shouts, stifle the clang of their weapons and the crunch of their boots, swallow the sick-sour smell of their sweat and blood, the clashing colours of their hair and skin and clothes.

How is anyone supposed to breathe through so much sensation?

How can anyone be expected to think or move or function at all?

There are days, rare but there, when Sandy lets herself imagine that she has grown. Evolved, if only a little, from the confused, frightened-angry sewer monster she was before the quest. There are days, rare but blessed, when she lets herself imagine the world has softened her, that she has become closer to something real now that she has something to hold on to.

Fighting back-to-back with Monkey, alive and thriving. Trading quips with Pigsy, even when she doesn’t really understand his insults. Letting her gaze wander starrily to the back of Tripitaka’s head, holding her gaze or her hand, basking in her smile. These things are living, these things are what it means to be a part of something real.

It is a part of being in the world, a part of being not-alone.

Sandy is...

She has been getting better at that.

A little.

Not sneaking away every time they stop for more than five minutes. Not hiding in the shadows while the others set up camp or cook or chat. Not disappearing in the middle of the night, running off by herself to find a quiet corner someplace where the only breath is her own. Not covering her face when they look at her, not being so hyper-aware and attuned to every little shift in their bodies. Not seeking safety in solitude, not hiding from her friends — her _family_ — because the sound of their breathing is sometimes too much for her to bear.

She is getting better at not being so easily overwhelmed.

She is getting better at not needing to be alone.

Out there, with them. Her friends, her family, her—

And even that, most days, is a lot.

Some days, even now, it’s too much.

And she loves them deeply, but...

But some days they are so, so _much_.

And that with only them.

Not this, not here. Not surrounded on all sides, as she is now, by demon armies, not shrouded in a disguise that should fit better than it does, not hiding in plain sight behind the bared teeth of a hungry monster. Not here, in this place where she needs to be aware of everything, where it is a matter of life and death to feel the world around her like the razor-blade it always has been.

Here, where being overwhelmed and overstimulated and overexposed is important.

And this so soon after Mycelia’s garden.

A moment in the woods, stolen and suspended, when she was not alone and somehow not afraid. A moment, no more, of being both of those things at the same time — not-alone but also not-afraid — and that was all it took for her to realise that something wasn’t right.

 _“It’s nice being alone,”_ he said, and she replied, because it was true, _“I’m not alone: you’re here.”_

And he thought that was so strange.

And she realised it too: that it was not just strange, that it was _wrong_.

Completely wrong, because she was not alone and she was not afraid.

And that...

That is not how the world works.

At least, it’s not how Sandy’s world works. Even in an illusory garden, even addled by magic and lulled into a false sense of comfort and security and welcome, a false sense of—

Of imagining that she might belong.

At least here she knows it’s not true.

Here, where she is left completely by herself and still not alone.

Surrounded by demons, by humans, by people with all their bodies and all their noise and so much sensation she’s certain her head will burst, if her lungs or her stomach don’t do it first.

At least here she knows that those feelings make sense.

It’s not safe here. It’s hard. Isn’t that what Tripitaka told her? It’s hard for all of them, even for Monkey, to be like this, so exposed and so much in danger all the time.

Sandy wears her demon persona like a mask: the kind that’s meant to hide her face, and the kind that’s meant to protect it.

She wears the name, too, like a second skin: _wrath_ and _bone_ , carving armour to protect her frayed and tattered parts from their prying eyes and their screeching voices.

She wears her new identity as close as she can, so that she might forget the old one is overstimulated and overwhelmed.

She wears a demon’s sneer, and she breathes through a demon’s mouth, and she pokes the fire and unfocuses her eyes so that she doesn’t see the boots fail to catch fire, fail to burn, fail to—

She does not think about her own failures.

She thinks like a demon would think, and she listens as a demon would listen, with all of her senses all at once, and she imagines that every sound is a fresh threat.

Just like a demon would.

Like a god would, too, if she’d spent her whole life hiding from the world.

Little wonder, she supposes, that its edges are still so sharp now she’s in it.

She tries not to listen, but she hears everything anyway.

Over on Dreglon’s side of the camp, far away, she hears Monkey’s roar of triumph as he slams another unwitting conscript into the dirt. She hears Tripitaka, watching from the sidelines groan and grit her teeth, and she hears her growl, _“you’re human, remember?”_ for approximately the hundredth time since she returned to him. She hears Dreglon cackling with the arrogant glee of a demon, so sure that his champion is the strongest and the toughest and the best, so sure that the fight is already won.

Closer, she hears the clang of swords and spears — behind her, beside her, before her, all around her, everywhere, _everywhere_ — as Khan’s soldiers train under Quiver.

She hears the pop and crackle of the fires, the one she’s tending herself and the dozens of others peppered throughout the two camps, some for food and some for warmth and some for other purposes entirely. She smells the smoke, thick and heavy, mingling with demon sweat and human sweat, mingling with the food Pigsy is preparing for General Khan and the flavourless slop that Dreglon has sitting and festering for his human conscripts.

She is deafened by the noise, nauseated by the stench, blinded by the clashing shades of Khan-red and Dreglon-blue.

All of these things all at once, ruthless and vivid and endless.

It is so overwhelming that when she hears the telltale heavy crunch of Pigsy’s approaching footsteps, she almost wants to offer herself in his place, a sacrifice to be thrown off a cliff at General Khan’s whim.

A small price to pay, she thinks miserably, for the silence that would surely follow.

He doesn’t give her the chance to offer, or to speak at all. A poor actor even when he’s not playing her cook-slave, he stomps over to her little fire, dumps an armful of vegetables into the cooking pot, and mutters, “Need you to boil these up until they’re good and tender.”

Sandy doesn’t look up from Tripitaka’s boots. “I’m busy.”

“Good for you. I’m about to be tossed off a bloody cliff.”

“Only if you perform badly,” Sandy points out. She’s trying to be helpful, though his grunt implies it misses the mark. Hastily, she amends, “Which you won’t, I’m sure. You’re excellent at making food into other food. And you’ve already impressed General Khan, so...”

“So I’d like to _continue_ impressing her.” His voice is a dry, leaden weight; it presses down on all the other voices, makes them easier to ignore. “So if you could please shut up and boil those vegetables for me...”

Sandy grits her teeth, but obeys nonetheless. She lifts her head with reluctance, hating the blast of sunlight as it catches in her eyes, hating the way it exposes her and all her discomfort. It is one thing to feel like this, wrung out and overstimulated, but it’s another thing entirely to be seen feeling it. To be known, even by one of her friends, one she would trust with her life if the need ever arose.

“Fine,” she grumbles, abandoning the stick in favour of a large slotted spoon. “But if the quality of your meal is adversely affected by whatever insidious magic is alive in those boots, don’t blame me.”

Pigsy snorts. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll manage to adversely affect its quality all by yourself,” he says, heaving a dramatic sigh. “No insidious magic necessary.”

“If I’m so dreadful,” Sandy pouts, “perhaps you should find yourself another...”

She breaks off, distracted by a flicker of motion somewhere behind her back; with no way to know for sure if they’re being watched or judged — at least not without glancing over her shoulder and giving away too much of herself — she plays it safe by backhanding Pigsy across the face.

“What the—”

“Know your place, slave!”

It comes out instinctively, the familiar curls and rolls of her demon-voice settling too comfortably behind her tongue. A shroud, a mask, a place to hide in plain view.

Pigsy, being rather less in need of a hiding place, and also having a better view of what’s actually going on behind her, glares.

“They’re nowhere near us, you buffoon,” he mutters, rubbing his jaw. “Save all that jumpy-paranoia stuff for when it actually counts for something, will you?”

“Ah.” Sandy clears her throat, returning with only some reluctance to herself. “I’m sorry. Being surrounded makes me uncomfortable.”

Rather more than just that, in truth, but she suspects that’s as deep as he’s willing to understand. She won’t bore him, or risk exposing herself further, by trying to explain more.

Indeed, his only response is to roll his eyes and grumble, “You sure you don’t just get a kick out of knocking me around?”

Sandy thinks he’s just joking. She’s mostly sure he is. But it’s harder than usual to read his expression when the space behind her eyes is throbbing with too much sensation. She thinks she should probably apologise again, just to make sure, but she also doesn’t want to let too much of her weakness to the surface. Doesn’t want him to see that ‘uncomfortable’ really means ‘anxious, overwhelmed, and panicking’.

“We need to be on guard,” she says after a beat. It’s true enough for now, and a viable excuse for her behaviour. “You can pay me back when we get out of this place and back to the...”

She doesn’t say ‘quest’. Even if the nearest body were another hundred paces away, another thousand or more, she would never risk saying that word aloud in the presence of so many pairs of ears.

“Uh huh.” He rubs his jaw again, then sighs and offers a little leather pouch. “Here, have some of this.”

Sandy peers inside, puzzled to find it full of pale yellow crystals. “Another of your cooking ingredients?”

“It was, yeah.” He sighs again, and shakes the pouch under her nose until she relents and pops one of the smaller pieces into her mouth. “Candied ginger. It was supposed to go with General Khan’s dessert, but looks like you need it more. Since you’re so ‘uncomfortable’ and all.” Said as if he knows exactly what that word really means, in spite of her best efforts to hide it. “Or at least to get that green look off your face before someone catches a look at you and suspects the worst.”

Sandy winces, rather more at the sweet-bitter flavour than his words. “Tripitaka said that I looked unwell.”

“That’s a polite way of putting it.” He boops her nose, no doubt to try and calm her, then hands over the pouch in its entirety; Sandy takes a second piece, hoping that the flavour will improve with exposure, and tucks the rest away in her belt. “Not the best look when you’re supposed to be in charge of the food, you know?”

It is, in fact, one of the few things Sandy does know, but alas it’s not a part of herself she can easily control. Not like her tone or her sneer or the empty, demonic look in her eyes; if she looks unwell, it’s because she feels unwell, because this place is a rusty blade pressed against an open vein.

She swallows the last of the ginger, breathes through her mouth, and says, “Thank you.”

Pigsy waves a hand. “You can thank me by not burning my bloody vegetables this time.”

Given her track record, that’s no small task.

Still, because the tangy aftertaste is actually making her feel a little bit better, she nods, adjusts her grip on the spoon, and says, “I’ll do my best.”

Said to him, it sounds nothing like it did when she said it to Tripitaka earlier; to her it was soft and reverent, full of feelings she couldn’t express in any other way. To him, it’s grudging and sullen, like a small child accepting a chore she doesn’t want to do. Still, apparently it’s good enough for Pigsy that she said it at all, because he doesn’t waste time fishing for anything more enthusiastic.

“Just don’t set yourself on fire,” he mutters.

Then he pats her on the shoulder, spins on his heels, and dashes back to whichever one of his innumerable other tasks is currently the most pressing.

Sandy doesn’t let herself wince until he’s gone, until she’s bowed her head again and the discomfort is safely hidden. It lingers more heavily than it should, the spectre of his fingers digging into her shoulder, its phantom pressure like a bruise spreading across her already-sensitive skin, burrowing down into the bone. 

Her clothes, offering no protection, feel thin and too tight; every loose thread is an itch along her nerves, every hole in the fabric invites a fresh blast of hot air from the fire. She wants to crawl out of it — all of it, all of her, clothes and skin and bone and nerve and everything — and hide somewhere she can’t be touched.

In the fire itself, maybe.

Never mind setting herself on fire; what difference would it make when she already feels like she’s burning alive?

She might have been tempted to try, even, if not for the boots still seething in its centre.

She doesn’t trust the boots any more than Tripitaka does, and however badly she wants the flames to peel off her skin and her clothes she certainly doesn’t want to lie down next to them. It’s been more than an hour now since Tripitaka threw them in there, and all the while the wood is burning down and down, ashes and cinders and the dregs of flame; more than an hour, yes, with still more ahead, but still the leather sits in the centre, unburning and untouched by the heat.

It makes her nervous, to look into the face of such a tainted thing, but at least this is a nervousness she knows how to handle. Magic and power, creation and destruction, the unexpected side-effects of well-intentioned gestures: there is nothing out of the ordinary in any of these things. At this point in the quest, Sandy has learned to simply expect them.

In the cooking pot, safely suspended above the tainted boots, Pigsy’s vegetables begin to boil. Recalling his instructions, Sandy pokes them with the spoon, stirring hopelessly until the water stops bubbling quite so violently.

Simple enough: poke things until they grow calmer. It certainly wouldn’t have that effect on her, but perhaps wet vegetables have different needs to wet gods. And so long as it keeps her from disappointing Pigsy, she won’t judge them.

 _How hard can it be,_ she thinks, staring at Tripitaka’s boots, _to keep things from burning?_

*

Harder than she thinks, apparently.

For the vegetables, which have devolved into a mushy, overboiled mess by the time Pigsy returns to claim them, and for herself as well. Her fingers are pricked with red and white mark, mottled and flame-touched where she forgot or neglected to take the proper precautions, shoving her hands into the fire to turn over the boots or stoking it higher with no regard for sense or safety.

It’s not as unpleasant as it should be, the itchy sting of burned fingers; in truth, it helps to draw her mind away from the other, less pleasant discomforts, the noise still clamouring in her head, the overwhelming pressure of boots and bodies, sounds and smells and colours, demons and humans and people and _toomuchtoomuchplease_.

They reunite, the four of them, only once before the big fight.

Monkey, bouncing restlessly on the balls of his feet, asks Sandy more than a dozen times if she knows anything about Khan’s champion.

“No,” she tells him, again and again, through clenched teeth.

Tripitaka, poking mournfully at her boots, sighs and says, “Are you sure you’re keeping the fire hot enough?”

“Oh, it’s hot enough,” Pigsy growls, poking just as mournfully at his ruined vegetables. “You had one bloody job, you scatter-brained little—”

“I’m sorry,” Sandy mumbles. “It was too much all at once.”

She’s not really talking about the vegetables, or the boots, or any of the other minor and menial tasks she’s failed at since they infiltrated the demons’ camps. She’s talking about the other thing: the noise and the chaos, the _toomuch_ overloading all of her senses at once, all those hellish distractions that make even menial, minor tasks into something overwhelming and almost impossible.

She closes her eyes, breathes through her mouth and listens to the overlapping rhythms of her friends’ heartbeats. She feels like she can hear everything, every pulse, every flutter in each of their chests; she doesn’t know if she’s imagining it but she does know that it helps her to keep breathing without giving in to the panic.

Monkey: hard and heavy, the thrill of looming combat, the dizzying blend of excitement and arrogance. He can’t wait for the big fight, his chance to shine; no doubt he’s been itching to get some blood on his knuckles ever since Tripitaka convinced him to pose as a human. Sandy can’t really blame him for that; if she thought she could get away with it, she would have done the same to Quiver, venting her discomfort through the only tool she has: physicality and power, rising to the bait of one who so clearly wants to antagonise her.

The cocky little demon would probably enjoy it, too. It’s easy enough to save face with blood in your mouth, but more difficult against an enemy who refuses to use any weapon but words. Sandy has stuck to the latter for now, but she knows that Quiver is hungry, just like Monkey, for something a little sharper.

Pigsy: rapid, nervous, fluttery, sinking dread from his throat down to the pit of his stomach. He’s afraid of what awaits him when the fight begins, afraid of being thrown off a cliff, and perhaps a little bit afraid of not being thrown off a cliff. Afraid of the glint in General Khan’s eye, hunger of a different kind, and of what it might mean for him, the way he always seems to attract the most ruthless kinds of demons. Afraid that there’s no clean way out of this for him, whether he impresses her or not. Afraid too, and rightly so, of Sandy’s culinary weaknesses jeopardising all of his strengths.

It was, she concedes, a poor choice to name herself an artiste in that particular field. Even under pressure, as they were at the time, she should have come up with something more credible. But of course it’s done now, and there’s nothing either one of them can do about it, only do their best to compensate for the other’s faults.

Tripitaka: rapid too, and thrumming, but in her it’s a different sound. Not thrill or excitement as with Monkey, not dread or discomfort as with Pigsy. Tripitaka’s human heart is nothing like theirs, and it’s nothing like Sandy’s; it’s a beautiful, graceful creature all its own, and it beats with a rhythm Sandy has never heard anywhere else. There is a sorrow to the sound, and a sort of quiet anger too; the two of them together make hers the loudest of the three, and by far the most powerful. Like the monk herself, Tripitaka’s heartbeat overwhelms everything.

Sandy wants to reach for her.

At least, she thinks she does.

It’s still a difficult and confusing thing, the desire for contact and connection, and one she doesn’t really recognise when it manifests inside her.

Hard to really know what it is, when she lived so much of her life without it. Harder still, to see herself as capable of offering it to someone else.

But she wants to. She wants to—

Monkey says, for the two-hundredth time, “Are you _sure_ you don’t know anything about Khan’s champion?”

Sandy takes a deep, effortful breath. “The only thing I know,” she says patiently, “is that I have a headache.”

“Yeah, yeah, inhaling magical boot-fumes will do that. Now, about Khan’s champion...”

“Let it go, Monkey.” This from Tripitaka, one hand resting lightly on Sandy’s back while the other twitches at her side. The roughness of her voice is a strange, vivid contrast to the gentle press of contact. “Maybe you should spend less time worrying about who you’ll be fighting, and more time worrying about what’s going to happen to the rest of us if you can’t convince these people you’re human.”

There’s accusation there, rich and heavy and unexpected. It makes Sandy want to flinch and pull away, even though she knows it’s not aimed at her.

She doesn’t, though. As hard as Tripitaka’s voice is, shot through with quietly seething anger as she glowers at Monkey, her touch is nothing but tender.

Sandy is still deeply uncomfortable with touch, most days. But tenderness, and particularly tenderness from Tripitaka, is something she very much needs right now.

“You worry too much,” Monkey breezes, flexing casually.

Tripitaka’s glare burns hotter, rivalling the fire. “Or maybe you don’t worry enough.”

Pigsy, still working on his mushy vegetables, says, “I could do with a spot of worry, if you’ve got some lying about.” His eyes don’t burn like Tripitaka, but there’s accusation in them just the same as he turns to Sandy and snaps, “What in the seven hells am I supposed to do with this?”

“I don’t know,” Sandy says miserably. “I said I was sorry.”

“Right, because ‘sorry’ is really going to fill General Khan’s belly.” He rolls his eyes, exaggeratedly irritable, and hauls the massive cooking pot up into his arms, never mind the heat or the weight. “You got me into this mess, you know. The least you could do is try not to make it worse.”

And he stomps off back to one of his other many, many cooking fires, dragging the pot with him, vegetable mush and all.

Sandy sighs, massages her throbbing temples. “I don’t suppose we can just fight our way out of here?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Monkey crows, with a triumphant look at Tripitaka. “Bust some heads, make a run for it.”

“And where would that get us?” Tripitaka demands, snatching her hand back so she can wave it at Monkey; Sandy’s back feels chilled and exposed without the contact. “We’d be no closer to finding Gorm and the scrolls. Not to mention your staff—”

“You think I don’t know that?” This time, it’s Monkey’s voice that grows low, and Monkey’s eyes that burn hot. “Don’t lecture me about my staff, monk.”

Tripitaka, oblivious to his rising fury, presses on. “And what about the rest of Dreglon’s human conscripts? Did you even spare a thought for them?” His hesitation is all the answer she needs to jab a finger into his chest. “You’d really leave them here to fend for themselves against two demon armies just so you could ‘bust some heads’ and run away?”

“Busting heads helps everyone,” Monkey says, shoving her away. “The humans would get out just fine.”

“You can’t know that!” Her voice is rising, growing dangerously loud; Sandy, still so painfully aware of the world around her, feels the threat of unwanted attention like a scorch-mark on her neck. “All you care about is showing off and making sure the whole world knows you’re the best and the toughest. Never mind all the trouble it causes for the rest of us.”

Sandy doesn’t look over her shoulder. She doesn’t lift her head. She breathes through her mouth and she takes a little piece of ginger from her pouch and she whispers as quietly as she can, “Tripitaka...”

Tripitaka doesn’t seem to hear her at all. “Not everything is about you,” she’s growling at Monkey. Her voice is still too high, too loud, too much; it’s not Monkey who’s going to get them into trouble if she keeps this up, but she doesn’t seem to realise it. “You can’t just do whatever you want all the time without ever thinking about the consequences of your actions. People could get _hurt_ , Monkey. People could—”

She stops.

And that—

Explains probably more than it should.

Monkey is typically oblivious, flexing and preening and glaring just a little, but Sandy is not. She knows what it means, the sudden silence, the unvoiced end to the sentence that now seems so unimportant. The unspoken memory, the name she can still barely even bring herself to think.

 _Kaedo_ , the boy she killed.

Kaedo, whose name Sandy had to invoke herself, to bring Tripitaka back out of her delirium in Mycelia’s garden. Kaedo, little more than a boy, who will now never become a man.

“Tripitaka...”

Her voice breaks. She can’t—

Behind her, someone clears their throat. Loud and deliberately obnoxious, it can only be Quiver snooping around again.

Listening more closely, Sandy recognises the crunch of his boots, his too-heavy tread; he walks like he’s trying to crush the ground beneath him for having the audacity to exist without his express permission. Like maybe he’s imagining the rocks he kicks out of his path are her head, or whoever else has annoyed him lately.

Sandy looks at Tripitaka, anguished and still so angry.

 _Not now,_ she thinks feverishly. _Please don’t make me yell at her now, please don’t make me use the voice on her, I can’t, not when she’s like this, I can’t, I can’t—_

Monkey, being not quite so unaware of the world as he pretends to be, clears his throat and elbows Tripitaka sharply in the ribs. “Keep it down, will you?”

Tripitaka, still lost inside her own heart, only glares.

Sandy feels herself start to panic. Quiver is not alone; she can sense the pressure of bodies close to him, two or three of his underlings following him around like loyal hounds. She can feel other eyes on them as well, humans and demons watching from nearby, glad for a distraction from their labours. Gossip-hungry eyes roving over them all: the little human with the big mouth, the big human with the good hair, and the pale-faced demon who for some reason isn’t yelling at either of them, who stands paralysed, overwhelmed, unable to—

She turns around.

The world seems to blur for a moment, the suddenness of the motion making her feel sick. She is dizzied, disoriented, disturbed; there are so many eyes on her, so many bodies, so much—

Closer and _closer_ —

She thinks quickly.

“You there!”

It is her own voice, loud and authoritative, as sharp as the little knife sheathed at her hip as it cuts through everything. She still can’t bring herself to yell at Tripitaka while she’s drowning inside herself, and so she directs her wrath at the approaching demon: Quiver, an easy target and one much more willing to try and hold his own against her.

And he does. The sneer on his face is practically an old friend by now, and the sword that appears in his hand, catching the flash of afternoon sunlight, desperately needs sharpening.

Beside her, she feels Tripitaka tense and then relax: herself again, and aware.

Sandy can’t afford to breathe a sigh of relief; she holds herself in absolute stillness, doesn’t look at either of her friends, and tries not to swallow too loudly.

“Yeah?” Closing the last of the distance between them, Quiver makes a show of looking her up and down. “Problem, your Ladyship?”

On his tongue the title is meant as a slight. Sandy, being accustomed to far crueller obscenities, the kind that catch fire under her skin and burn for years, doesn’t even bother to acknowledge it.

“As a matter of fact, yes.” She draws herself up to her full height, dwarfing Tripitaka and even Monkey, and waves the spoon in their general direction, reminding herself that they mean nothing to her demon-self. “You are to please return Dreglon’s little human pests to him. Their presence here offends me.”

Monkey snorts, jabs her playfully in the ribs, and hisses, “ _You_ offend _me_.”

Quiver, meanwhile, is scowling. “Too high and mighty to send them back yourself?”

“I am _busy_.” She gestures at the fire, forgetting in her haste that the cooking pot is gone, that it and its contents are on the other side of the camp with a sulking Pigsy. “Ah...”

Her vision blurs for a moment, then refocuses with perfect, preternatural clarity. All of a sudden, she can make out every detail on Quiver’s face, every shudder and twitch, every line and pockmark. He stares at the fire in derisive silence as though trying to make sense of what he’s seeing, and for a long, terrible moment Sandy can only stand there and pray that he’s as stupid as he is arrogant.

Alas not.

He turns back to her, points a disbelieving finger at the fire and says, “Are those _boots_?”

Tripitaka lets out a strained moan.

Monkey splutters, then quickly hides his face.

Sandy orders herself not to panic.

She breathes through her mouth and she holds herself still and tall and she moves and speaks and thinks like a demon. One hand gripping the spoon, pointed at his face like a weapon, the other reaching into her pouch for a piece of ginger. Slow, lazy, careless; she takes it into her mouth, not to soothe or to comfort herself, but to make a show of her indifference.

That the burst of sweet-bitter flavour helps to settle her stomach is not for him to know.

“Of course not,” she snarls, baring her teeth between each bite. “Are you an imbecile?”

Quiver narrows his eyes. First at her, then at the fire, the unburnt boots so much on display. Sandy can see the too-sharp lines of bodies behind him, his friends standing close and the rest of the camp further behind; she’s lost count of how many pairs of eyes are on them — on _her_ , hot and hungry — and any time she looks directly at one she gets pulled further and further out of herself, further and further into the panic and the horror, the familiar feeling of drowning that comes with being thoroughly overwhelmed.

She can’t breathe. Not through her mouth, not through her nose, not in any way at all.

She thinks Quiver takes a step forwards. She thinks maybe Monkey does too, moving by instinct to protect his friend, never mind that he’s supposed to be the helpless little human.

“You really think I don’t know a pair of boots when I see one?” Quiver is saying, and—

And Sandy reacts without thought.

It’s all she can do, act blindly and desperately, because there is no space left inside of her for thought, because every nerve in her body is occupied in trying to process the blurry haze of _toomuch_ throwing itself at her from all directions.

She can’t think, and so she doesn’t think. She only moves, exactly as a demon would.

One hand on his neck, gripping hard enough to raise bruises. The other bracing herself on the ground as she drags both of their bodies down and down. Dirt on her knees, dry and ashy from the fire: she fixes her whole mind on the immediacy of it, the earth below, the flesh under her fingers, demon-skin pulled taut, his low grunts echoing in her ears and her head as she shoves his face almost into the fire itself, drowning out his friends and her friends, drowning out all the voices, all the bodies and people, everything, everything, everything except this: demon-action, demon-violence, demon-cruelty.

“I think,” she hears herself hiss, “you should take a _closer_ look.”

And she pushes him harder, until his moustache starts to smoulder.

And now he’s the one who is terrified, squeaking and struggling, desperate to get away, and Sandy breathes her own panic out through her mouth. She focuses on the fire, the burnt-leather stench overpowering his sweat and hers, overpowering the lingering odour of mushy vegetables and Pigsy’s disappointment. Burnt leather, but the leather isn’t burning.

She doesn’t give him a chance to notice that.

“You’re crazy!” he gurgles, struggling hopelessly against her grip.

A demon’s grip. He doesn’t stand a chance.

Sandy tightens it, turns his head brutally to the side so he can look up and see her demon’s face, her demon’s sneer. So she can see it too, reflected in his eyes, a reminder of what she is and what she needs to be.

“As you can see,” she tells him, in a voice that threatens far worse than a tightening grip, “there is nothing there but spoiled vegetables.”

And she squeezes his neck until he howls and gives in — “Right, sure, whatever you say!”, as if there was ever any doubt of that — and then she hauls him back up to his feet, shoves him away from her in disgust, and lets her sneer twist into a snarl.

“I’m so glad we understand each other,” she says, thickening her accent until she barely even understands it herself. “Now, have you any more idiotic questions or will you recall your place and do as I say like a good little moustache man?”

He stares at her, breathing heavily, seemingly rendered mute. Whether by the act of violence itself or her courage in assaulting him in the first place, Sandy can’t tell and doesn’t care.

She watches his chest heave under his armour, lets the ragged in-and-out remind her of how to catch her own breath, slow her own pulse. There’s a dull buzzing in the back of her mind that speaks of bad things to come, the tidal wave of sensation and sensory overload she’s been holding back. The whole camp is staring at them now — at her, at her, at _her_ — and she knows it’s only a matter of moments before the weight of so much attention throws itself over her and she drowns.

They have to be gone before that happens.

She has to be alone.

She has to be—

She can’t be _alone_. She knows this. But she has to be as close to it as she can get, here in this nightmare of a place where ‘alone’ is so far out of her reach.

Quiver is still staring at her.

Monkey is too, now, and Tripitaka. It feels like everyone is staring at her, the whole world and then some, and if she had the courage to turn around she knows she would see—

“Did I stutter?” she hisses at Quiver, willing her body not to start shaking, willing her voice to stay strong. “ _Go_ , and take the human rabble with you. Before I lose my temper.”

Before she loses something far more dangerous than that.

Still, the threat gets through to him, no doubt aided by the memory of her fingerprints on his neck, a memory Sandy hopes will linger for a long time. He coughs, gathers up what little self-respect he had to begin with, and turns his seething wrath on Monkey and Tripitaka.

“You heard the lady,” he barks, tripping over his tongue in his desperation to recapture some shred of authority. “Move!”

Tripitaka leaps to attention, playing the obedient little farmer with her usual thespian’s dedication.

Monkey, seemingly unable to help himself, gives Sandy another jab as he struts past.

“You’re kind of scary,” he whispers, snickering to himself like he’s secretly impressed. “You know that?”

Sandy tries to smile. Tries to show her teeth — demon’s teeth, a demon’s smile, sharp and deadly — and tell him that yes, she does know that, she knows it very, very well. But the smile will not come, and her tongue, still tasting of ginger, is stuck to the roof of her mouth.

She swallows. She breathes through her mouth. She does not speak.

She watches as Quiver leads them away, Monkey and Tripitaka, her friends, her only friends here in this place so full of demons and humans and people, of sweating bodies and staring eyes, curled lips and flaring nostrils, sound and chaos and madness and—

She crouches back down in front of the fire. Head down, stick in hand, poking at the boots that will not burn.

She inhales deeply, blocks out the thrum of voices, replaces it with the crackling of flames, the hissing of embers, the smoke rising like a whispered secret, lost to the cold, heavy air.

 _Please_ , she thinks, filling her head with fire. _Stop looking at me, stop seeing me, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone..._

She doesn’t know if they do or not. She’s too afraid to look up and see.

She stares into the fire, watches Tripitaka’s boots fail and fail and fail to burn, and she breathes through her mouth until she can’t breathe at all.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

That night, after the big fight is over, Tripitaka is transformed.

Glowing, gleaming, glittering with life and warmth, she glides over to Sandy, not seeming to care who sees, and whispers, like it’s the most precious secret in the world, “He’s _alive_.”

Kaedo, she means.

Who else but the boy she thought she’d killed would put such a radiant smile on her face? Who else would make her glow and gleam, who else would transform her so completely?

Sandy, crouched in front of her fire, hugging the unburnt, scroll-forged boots to her chest, tries without success to find a smile. “That’s wonderful, Tripitaka.”

“He’s alive!” She speaks like she’s been born again, like the weight of a thousand worlds has been lifted up off her shoulders. “Alive, Sandy! Do you know what that means?”

“It means you didn’t kill him.” Sandy swallows. Her chest feels unbearably tight. “Is it safe for you to be here? You’re a servant now, remember, and I...”

Tripitaka stares at her for a very long beat, looking rather incredulous. The glitter is already fading from her eyes, replaced by something darker; Sandy hates that she is its source.

“Have you looked up from that fire recently?” Tripitaka asks, very slowly.

“I...” It’s a fair point; Sandy sighs, swallows, and shakes her head. “No.”

She does now, though, at Tripitaka’s urging. She looks up, peers around through bleary, smoke-sore eyes, and finds the whole camp in a state of bedlam. Soldiers from Khan’s side shout and cheer their general’s victory, drunk and still drinking more, while conscripts from Dreglon’s side pack up their things with nervous resignation, murmuring to each other in hushed whispers, debating whether or not their new master will prove a more merciful one.

Sandy doubts the volatile Khan will show them any more kindness than Dreglon did, but at least they’ll be better fed.

“Trust me,” Tripitaka says, with a wry, reassuring smile, “we’re safe. No-one’s paying any attention right now to anybody who doesn’t have a gallon of ale in either hand.”

“Oh,” Sandy forces out, then quickly turns back to the safety and silence of the fire. “That’s... good.”

Something in her tone — or perhaps the lack of it — must give away her misery, because Tripitaka studies her for just a moment them plonks herself down next to her. The flush of joy is long gone now, and in its place is nervousness and worry; once again, Sandy hates herself for being the cause of that, the reason why Tripitaka, who has had so few reasons lately to gleam and glow and glitter, is now growing serious, aging second by second as she looks at her.

“Are you okay? You look—”

“Awful?”

The word is an insult, spat on the ground; she hates it, hates herself, hates that it’s true, hates—

“Pretty awful, yeah.”

Hates that Tripitaka can’t even deny it.

Sandy closes her eyes, tries to block out the look on Tripitaka’s face, the worry in her voice, the overpowering flood of emotion that comes with being so close to her.

“The fight was very loud,” she explains.

A simple truth, but one that burns, igniting all the little embers of awfulness that tighten her chest and blanch her face. The fight, Monkey’s fight, Kaedo’s fight, the fight that made Tripitaka glitter and glow and gleam, was so _loud_.

Sandy is no stranger to combat, of course. Violence, bloodlust, the ravening heat of battle... these things live and breathe in her chest like a second set of lungs. But there is a whole world of difference between the kind of fighting she’s used to — survival and urgency, fighting to stay alive or to right an injustice, to protect herself or protect those she cares about — and what she witnessed here tonight.

Sport. Entertainment.

A competition, with no purpose other than betting and bragging rights.

The throb of bodies on all sides, the primal screams of spectators baying for blood, not even caring which gladiator it comes from. The violence, so far as Sandy could tell, was almost worse in the audience then it was in the fighting pit. At least the combatants — Monkey and Kaedo, her friends — had reasons for their bloodshed, but the demons and humans watching only wanted their hunger sated.

Screams and shrieks, howls and cries, noise, noise, _noise_ , the scent of blood and sweat, sickening and sour, permeating the air until it was unbreathable.

She felt flayed.

She still feels—

“Yeah.” Tripitaka, speaking so softly, balming the memory of so much chaos, balming Sandy too, as best she can with her low voice and her loving eyes. “It was very loud.”

She touches her, then, gently but with purpose; she knows better than to try and offer comfort in contact when Sandy is feeling this raw, so she shrouds it in something easier to swallow: prying the warped, scroll-forged boots out of her arms.

Sandy blinks her eyes open, tries to focus on Tripitaka’s hands, on the uncalloused warmth, the way it lingers far more effectively than all the heat from a hundred cooking fires. Tries to focus on her fingertips, the way they brush the surface of the boots, the fabric of her sleeve. Tries to think only of that, only of her: Tripitaka, here and close, drowning out the noise with her perfect, patient quiet.

“I...”

Tripitaka squeezes her wrist, then pulls away, taking the boots with her.

“Still no luck getting them to burn?” she asks.

Gulping air, Sandy focuses on the question, the practical problem that needs solving. Makes herself whole again, a god who lives and breathes to serve this beautiful human.

“No luck,” she affirms, focusing and focusing and focusing. “Whatever else that scroll may be, it’s incredibly powerful.”

She tried to say this during the fight, she recalls, but given everything else that was happening at the time she doubts Tripitaka heard a single word she said.

Indeed, she’s frowning up at her now, the frustration on her face making it quite clear this is new information. 

“I can see that,” she says. “We’ll have to find another way to get rid of them, I guess. Who knows what harm they could do if left unchecked?”

Not much, if their effect on Tripitaka is any measure to go by: gruesome, to be sure, the spreading infection of discomfort and creeping mould, but Sandy doesn’t know if she’d call it harmful. Still, the memory makes her gag all over again, as vivid now as then, so she washes it from her mind and defers as she always does to the wiser human.

“If you think it’s necessary,” she says with a shrug.

“I do.” Said firmly, steadily, and with confidence that it is right. She really is transformed, Sandy notes, by the cleansing of her conscience, the realisation that she is not a murderer, that whatever harm her puppet-possessed self inflicted on Kaedo was fleeting and swiftly mended. “Whatever dark magic lies in that scroll, we don’t want to just leave it lying around. Even if it’s just a pair of badly-fitting boots. You know?”

Sandy bites her tongue. “Um...”

But that’s as far as she get, cut off and paralysed by a shout from somewhere behind them.

It’s not—

It’s nothing to do with them.

It’s just a drunken brawl. A scrap, nothing more, breaking out between one of Khan’s soldiers and one of the new servants ‘liberated’ from Dreglon. It’s nothing, it’s pointless and purposeless, meaningless and mundane. It’s _nothing_ , nothing at all, and Sandy knows that she should be relaxing now, but she can’t seem to remember how.

Her body is already in survival mode, still hypersensitive and on edge after the wildness of the big fight, and it seems to have forgotten how to unclench. Her nerves are live wires, sparking and stuttering, her muscles locked up in seizing spasms; though she knows they’re safe, still it’s all she can do to keep from curling up in a ball to protect herself.

From what, she doesn’t know.

She can no more protect herself from the sounds and smells and sensory screams of this place than Tripitaka could have protected her poor feet from the cursed boots she created with the scroll.

Sandy, at least, knew what she was getting into when she put on a demon’s face. Tripitaka could never have known that Mycelia’s scroll was a fake, or that the boots it made would cause her pain.

That garden caused so much trouble, Sandy thinks, and feels her hands start to shake.

Tripitaka covers them with her own. “It’s okay,” she says, no doubt referring to the noise. “We’re okay. Okay?”

Sandy nods, catches her breath. Aided by Tripitaka’s ministrations, her muscles gradually slow their spasms.

“Yes,” she says, feeling her pulse start to slow too. “Yes, um...”

Tripitaka watches her closely, but makes no further comment. Perhaps she can see in Sandy’s face that she’s coming back to herself; perhaps she simply knows that trying to help would only make it worse. Sandy doesn’t want attention drawn to her jumpiness, her anxiety, her weakness; she wants to pretend she’s a demon, wants to believe she’s powerful and talented and clever, wants to—

“We should go for a walk,” Tripitaka murmurs, seemingly out of nowhere.

Wants, very much, to do that.

It is the most wonderful thought in the world. To leave this camp, with its noise and its people and its chaos, to leave behind the constant, never-ending awareness of every breath and every shift in the world around her, to step out into the nearby forest, catch her breath and smooth down the jagged edges in her nerves, the pinpricks under her skin. To be alone, as much as she can be with Tripitaka beside her, and to breathe without pain or panic.

“Why?” she hears herself ask, even as she thinks, _does it matter?_

Tripitaka holds up the boots. “Since we can’t burn them,” she says, “we should bury them.”

Sandy cannot fathom what good that would do, but she really, really wants to get out of here.

“I’m better at digging than cooking,” she admits, rather hesitantly.

Tripitaka snickers. “Sandy, you’re better at _anything_ than cooking.”

Still, she squeezes her hands like her failings are somehow a source of affection, a reason for fondness and love, like it somehow makes her more worthy, not less, that she is the world’s most dreadful cook.

Sandy doesn’t understand that at all, but she knows that the overwhelming sensations become more bearable when Tripitaka is holding her hands and so she doesn’t complain. She holds tight to the feeling, to the softness and kindness, to the idea of being held and warmed and loved, and she thinks again of Mycelia’s garden, of Tripitaka’s hands closing around hers just like this but harder, more urgent, more desperate.

 _“There you are,”_ Sandy whispered, then, and she felt the words and the truth resonate all through her.

Now, she breathes through her mouth, looks up into Tripitaka’s eyes, and says, “We’ll be missed.”

Tripitaka shakes her head. “Not if we go now,” she insists. “They’re all too busy celebrating or drowning their sorrows. No-one’s going to notice if we wander off for a little while.”

Sandy doubts that’s true. Quiver, at the very least, is unlikely to let her go anywhere without an argument.

She doesn’t want to upset Tripitaka by mentioning that, though, and she doesn’t want to look up and see the state of things for herself; she doesn’t want to have to take in all that chaos and wildness, the victory and defeat hanging thick on the air, the sickening stench of sweat and ale, blood and wine, all the voices and the bodies and the—

She focuses, again, on the press of Tripitaka’s hands. “What about Monkey and Pigsy?”

“Pigsy’s in General Khan’s tent,” Tripitaka says, with a poorly-suppressed shudder. “I definitely don’t think we should disturb him. As for Monkey...” Another grimace, just as badly hidden. “Probably skulking in a corner somewhere, licking his wounds.”

Sandy frowns. “Was he injured in the fight? Kaedo’s only a boy...”

She should be used to it by now, the way that Tripitaka laughs, the way she takes back her hands so she can swat at her shoulder, the way looks at her like the question was utterly ridiculous, like Sandy is ridiculous as well, or maybe just stupid, for having asked it.

The laugh, the look, the shame of realising she’s misunderstood, again, something that should be obvious. 

She is very, very used to it.

Still, it stings more than she’ll admit when Tripitaka shakes her head, still chuckling, and explains: “It’s a metaphor, Sandy.”

“I knew that.” She ponders for a beat, trying not to pout. “A metaphor for what?”

The warmth in Tripitaka’s eyes flares, eclipsing even the heat from the fire. She draws Sandy into an unexpectedly powerful hug, smiles against her collarbones, and whispers, “You know, I really love you.”

“That’s... um...” She pulls away, blushing self-consciously, and mumbles, “That’s not really an answer.”

“I know.”

And so they both fade, the smile and the warmth, and Sandy feels cold and sick, like she just extinguished something sacred and beautiful. She wishes so badly that she could be better at this, that she could be better at everything. She wishes—

She says, “Tripitaka,” but she doesn’t know where to go from there.

Tripitaka shakes her head. She rests a hand on Sandy’s thigh, drumming a patternless rhythm with her fingertips, like she’s trying to centre herself, using Sandy’s body as a kind of touchstone.

“I used the crown sutra,” she confesses at last, very quietly. “To help Kaedo win the fight. When I say Monkey’s licking his wounds, I...”

Sandy lights up a little, finally understanding. “You mean the wounds to his pride.”

Tripitaka nods. She’s very serious now, inching her way towards sorrow. “He really hates when I use it,” she says. Then, dropping her voice to a whisper, “I hate when I use it too.”

Sandy understands that as well. “It hurts,” she says, “to hurt someone you care about.”

“Yeah.” Another nod, weary now, like her head is suddenly a great weight upon her shoulders. “I hate causing him pain, of course. And I hate that it... I hate that sometimes it’s the only way to get through to him. His head is so hard, and he’s so stubborn, you know? Sometimes he just won’t listen to anything else.” A sigh, a shrug, and then another confession: “But I’m supposed to be _Tripitaka_. I’m supposed to be the one who can find a peaceful solution. Even to that.”

It’s a lot to take in, and a very deep explanation of a small, simple metaphor, but Sandy absorbs every word, listening with all of herself, because it is Tripitaka and she would listen to her speak for centuries if she could.

“It’s a terrible burden,” she says. “A terrible responsibility, to hold such power over another. But you are pure of heart, Tripitaka, and pure of spirit and soul and everything else. You are...” She stops, changing tack before she starts to blush again. “It speaks well of you that the words weigh as much on your head as the crown does on Monkey’s.”

“I don’t know that he would agree with you,” Tripitaka sighs. The bitterness in her voice lingers, a taint on the cold air, and she waves a hand as if to try and banish it. “Never mind. We can fill him in later, if he’s willing to talk to me by then.”

“I’m sure he will be,” Sandy says, with earnest optimism. “Monkey doesn’t hold grudges for long. I think deep emotions fall out of his head, lest they stay too long and ruin his hair.”

Tripitaka laughs, and it is warm and light and beautiful once more. She’s not quite glowing like she was when she first arrived, but she is closer now, as though speaking about it was a weight lifted all its own.

“Thanks, Sandy,” she says, then rises to her feet, cursed boots in hand. “Come on, then. Let’s go, while the going is still good.”

Sandy nods, and stands as well, a little awkwardly. She turns away from the fire, the precious little sanctuary she’s built for herself and her overstimulated senses, and towards the maelstrom they need to pass through, the mass of heaving bodies and loud voices, of strong personalities and stronger spirits, of sights and sounds and smells and somuch _somuch_ —

She breathes, she swallows, and she follows Tripitaka’s lead.

She knows better than to hope that the task will be painless.

*

As anticipated, Quiver doesn’t let them go without throwing his weight around.

Frustratingly sober, in spite of the ongoing festivities, he spots them crossing the perimeter and is all too eager to intercept. Just him this time; no doubt his underlings found the call of celebration far more enticing than his posturing moustache and his lopsided helmet. It makes little difference to Sandy, a dozen soldiers or one sour-faced lieutenant, but she can tell by the look on his face that he’s not happy to be facing her alone.

Even so, he puts on his usual airs, all bravado and bluster and—

“Where do you think you’re slinking off to at this time of night?”

Sandy locks eyes with him, turns hers to steel to cover up her discomfort. They’re still close enough to the ongoing revelries that the noise is a scorch-mark on her nerves, and it takes more control than she’d like Tripitaka to see, slipping into her demon persona, baring her teeth in a sneer.

“What business is that of yours?” she demands, turning her voice to ice as a balm for the burns inside her skin. “Do you not have more important matters to attend to?”

“Not at the moment.” He pulls back his lips, countering her sneer with one of his own, eyes narrowing as they fall on Tripitaka and the bundle of unburnt boots she’s hugging to her chest. “Suppose you’ll try and convince me that’s not a pair of boots either?”

“Of course it’s not,” Sandy replies, readying her scythe and stepping lithely in front of her human charge. “Perhaps your time would be better spent in getting your vision checked, hm?”

It is only partly intended to rankle him. Mostly, she’s just trying to keep his focus on her and not on Tripitaka or her tainted cargo. She can block out the noise behind her, can focus all of herself on his moustache and his beady eyes, his curled lip and his pale imitation of her sneer, can do anything, no matter how difficult, so long as she’s doing it to protect Tripitaka. As long as she is dressed as a servant, as long as she is carrying their cursed cargo, she’s in danger; Sandy has no choice but to remain focused, and to keep herself as the centre of Quiver’s focus as well.

And she does. And for as long as his eyes are on her and hers are on him, she can ignore the rest; she can keep her breathing even and steady, can keep her hands strong on the haft of her weapon, can keep her lips curled as she lifts the blade to his face.

He meets it with his own, of course, the serrated edges of his sword catching the clean, perfect curve of her scythe, and the gleam in his eye looks just like fire, glinting with a scroll’s magic.

“Go on, then,” he challenges, pushing himself all the way into her personal space; for a moment, the invasion makes Sandy’s nerves want to cry out, but at the same time this kind of threat is familiar to them and they know from years of experience, how to react to it. “Enlighten me. What kind of ‘vegetable’ is that supposed to be, eh?”

“Please.” Sandy snorts, drawing herself up. For once, her height serves her well; rather than making her shy, as it normally would in a room full of other people, here with only him it makes her a threat. Especially with him being so short, and so clearly desperate to compensate for that shortness. “Do you expect me to believe you don’t even recognise a...”

She coughs, floundering for the name of any kind of foodstuff that isn’t sewer rot.

Tripitaka, keeping her head bowed, clears her throat and offers helpfully, “A...um... a parsnip, my lady?”

Sandy doesn’t allow her shoulders to slump, doesn’t allow the relief to touch her face.

“Be silent, human filth!” She doesn’t allow her voice to shake either, as she sharpens her glare and lifts her scythe just a little bit higher, locking eyes with Quiver once more. “Do you expect me to believe General Khan’s most trusted lieutenant does not even recognise a parsnip?”

He clears his throat, eyes darting briefly to Tripitaka and her boots. “Are you serious?”

“Are you an imbecile?” A pause, then, carefully calculated; she counts out the space between her heartbeats, between shouts from the camp and the hitches in her breath. “I could always bring it to General Khan, yes? I’m sure that _she_ will—”

“No!” Another cough, but this one comes coupled with a scrambling, nervous step backwards. Even with a blade pointed at his face, he’s more frightened of Khan’s name; judging by her brief encounter with the general, Sandy can’t exactly blame him for that. “No need for that, now, is there? You’re the expert on this stuff, I suppose. Who am I to question what a bloody parsnip looks like?”

He cuts another glance at Tripitaka, swiftly aborted when Sandy lunges at him with a growl and a flash of her scythe.

“You are nobody,” she informs him icily. “And I do not appreciate it when little nobodies with poorly-kept moustaches imagine that they can tell me how to do my job. I am an _artiste_ , you know.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grouches. “You’ve mentioned it a few thousand times.”

“Apparently not enough, if you continue to question me in this manner.”

He holds up his hands, then, not because he believes her but because she’s growling again, low guttural snarls catching in her throat, drowning out the revelry behind them, smothering the suspicion in his beady little eyes.

She doesn’t feel completely in control of herself. Probably wasn’t, even before he made the mistake of turning those eyes on Tripitaka. Now she feels dangerous; if he were to try again, she’s not entirely convinced she wouldn’t tear out his throat.

Her skin feels too tight, skittering little bugs crawling underneath, and there’s a dull throbbing behind her eyes, the kind that threatens something awful and unstoppable if she doesn’t get to safety soon. It is too much work, protecting Tripitaka while also trying to block out all the noise and chaos behind her, too difficult to remember what kind of demon she’s supposed to be this time, too painful to process all these things at once, and she just wants, she just needs, she just—

 _Leave me alone,_ she thinks, and realises with a shudder that she would tear him limb from limb to make it happen.

Thankfully, she doesn’t have to. Quiver may be a posturing idiot, but he knows when he’s bested; he throws up his hands, stomps his foot like a toddler throwing a tantrum, and backs all the way out of range.

“Fine!” This punctuated by another stomp, another snarl. “Carry on, then, if you must. But be quick about it, eh? General Khan don’t like it when her servants go wandering about at all hours.”

And off he goes, fleeing back to the protection of his fellow soldiers as fast as his little legs can carry him. Sandy watches him go, thankful for the chilled air that floods in to replace him, and lets her scythe fall back to her side before anyone can see how hard her arm is shaking.

Tripitaka, standing stiff and still beside her, lets out a shaky sigh. “He _really_ doesn’t like you,” she says quietly.

It’s nothing that Sandy doesn’t know perfectly well already. Quiver has singled himself out as a problem numerous times since she and Pigsy infiltrated Khan’s army, and his interest in them has only grown stronger the more Khan has warmed to their ‘talents’. Sandy doesn’t think he suspects their deception — he’s not clever or observant enough for that — but the two of them have made themselves invaluable, and that bothers him enough to lash out.

Quiver is a bully, nothing more. He’s used to being obeyed and heeded without question, and it angers him that Sandy — no, that _Lady Wrathbone_ — doesn’t duck her head when he raises his voice, that she doesn’t flinch when he speaks to her, that she counters him and challenges him, that she humiliates him effortlessly and does what she pleases, no matter how many times he tells her not to.

He wants to put her in her place, where all lesser demons should be sent, and it drives him to distraction that his tactics do not work on her.

“He’s nothing to worry about,” she tells Tripitaka, in what she hopes is a confident, reassuring sort of voice. “No teeth behind his words.”

She doesn’t add that sparring with Quiver, as toothless as he is, is the closest to normal she’s felt since this charade began. That it is something she understands, a role she can play without having to think, to stare down a loud-mouthed demon and make him... well, _quiver_.

Tripitaka studies her closely for a beat, then says, “We’d better get moving, before someone else notices.”

And so they do.

And the relief, as they slip through the underbrush and away and away and away from the noise and the chaos, bodies and blood and breath and broth, is such a palpable, indescribable thing that Sandy’s knees almost buckle.

She holds herself upright, though, for Tripitaka’s sake. Because she doesn’t want her to turn around, to see that she’s shaking, to feel too much, too deeply, and say—

“Are you okay?”

Sandy doesn’t have an answer. She is breathless; her chest feels too tight and her heart is pounding against the walls of her ribcage like a thunderstorm, rain pounding on a glass window, threatening to crack it open. She can barely think, and she certainly can’t answer such a messy and difficult question.

“Um,” she says.

Tripitaka peers at her face, dark eyes glowing like embers in the dark. “I guess all that noise really was getting to you, huh?”

 _Not just the noise,_ Sandy wants to say. _The noise, yes, their voices and their drinking and their fighting, their boots churning up the earth, their breath strangling mine in my throat. The noise, yes, but everything else too. The smell of their sweat and their blood and their liquor, the clashing colours of their armour, their weapons, their eyes. Their bodies, so many of them, all the time, everywhere, and it’s so much, you can’t know how much, you can’t understand how much, how much, how—_

She says, quietly and with absolute calm, “We’re not out of earshot yet.”

Tripitaka’s hand, suspended between them in the moonlight, looks strange and shimmery. She looks sort of suspended herself, too, like she wants to reach out and touch her but can’t bring herself to move. Sandy’s words, and their unpleasant truth, seem to bring her back to herself, though, breaking whatever spell she was under, whatever strange magic made her look at her with such yearning.

The spell broken, Tripitaka shakes herself. Her fingers twitch just a little, and then they’re gone, wrapped around the cursed boots like she’d never even thought to reach out at all.

“I suppose not.” She swallows audibly. “We should...”

Sandy nods, hides her face like the wretched, miserable failure of a god she is. Her powerful, confident demon self is already halfway forgotten, buried inside of her like a secret, as the boots soon will be too.

“After you,” she says to Tripitaka, an act of chivalry to hide the way she’s shivering.

Tripitaka looks at her long and hard. Her lips twitch, like she wants to say something; her hands too, like maybe she wants to do something. Like she wants to—

“Right,” she says, and coughs like the air is thick with smoke. “Let’s go.”

And, again, they do.

*

They come to a stop in a small, secluded clearing.

Peaceful. Quiet, mostly. The voices and firelights from the demons’ camp are faded and muted here, almost entirely drowned out by the softer sounds of nature, insects and the whispering breeze. If Sandy closes her eyes and breathes just so, she can almost imagine there’s nothing else here at all, can almost imagine that she and Tripitaka are—

“ _Alone_ ,” Tripitaka says, with a scorching smile.

Sandy feels her breath stop; the illusion shatters.

“Um?”

The smile flickers, falters.

“I just mean...” And there: extinguished. “After all that noise, you know? You must feel relieved, finally being alone.”

The word resonates in Sandy’s head, squirmy and uncomfortable; it burrows under her skin, settles sourly in her belly, phantasmal echoes of a moment that should never have been, a feeling that wasn’t real, that could never be real.

Like bitter fruit rotten underneath, like a garden that isn’t really a garden: being alone but not really.

It floods her tongue, churns inside of her, the memory of Mycelia’s garden, of a moment too much like this, tainted and twisted and not real.

Nauseated, she reaches for a piece of Pigsy’s ginger. She can’t banish the memory, but she can smother its effects.

“I’m not alone,” she hears herself say, now just like she did then, and the words echo and they burn. “You’re here.”

And she expects the same response, as well: confusion, a wry smile, and—

_You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met._

Like she hasn’t lived with that strangeness her whole life. Like she doesn’t know it perfectly well already, without having to hear it said.

Bad enough from a stranger. Sandy doesn’t know if she could bear it from Tripitaka as well.

But Tripitaka only laughs, swats her shoulder, and says, “You know what I mean.”

Sandy doesn’t, of course. What she knows is only what she sees, what’s in front of her: alone, but not. 

Isn’t that always the problem? Isn’t that how she knew it was a problem in the first place, back in the garden? That the words she heard were not true to the world she saw when she looked around her, that she was definitely, definitely not alone, no matter what he said. That she was not alone, and yet still feeling the quiet and calm as if she was. That she—

That such a thing was so unfathomable it couldn’t possibly be real.

Sandy swallows, and says, “We should hurry before we’re missed.”

Tripitaka is real, though, and she sees her now, as she has always seen her, and she understands her, as much as anyone could ever understand someone as strange as her. Her fingers fall away from Sandy’s shoulder and finds her hand instead, clasping it so tight but with a gentleness that makes her insides melt.

It’s overwhelming. It’s frightening. It’s—

“Hey,” Tripitaka says, in a voice just like her touch: it holds tight but with an aching gentleness. “What is it?”

And that is different too, from how it was in the garden.

 _“What’s wrong?”_ he asked then, and of course in that perfect place of perfect peace there was no answer. Only herself, anxious and scared for no reason, so afraid because for the first time in her life she was not afraid.

Because that, the absence of fear, was impossible.

 _“What’s wrong?”_ he asked, and the answer was _nothing_ , because of course it was _everything_.

But that’s not what Tripitaka is asking her now.

Tripitaka doesn’t look at her like she’s something strange, even though Sandy knows that she is. She doesn’t look at her like she assumes something must be wrong every time she speaks or looks around, every time she does or doesn’t tremble. She looks at her, and she sees her for what she is: frequently frightened, constantly confused, always anxious. Lost and drowning, yes, in this world that is so much bigger and louder than she is, but not _wrong_ , and no more strange than anything else they’ve seen or experienced since taking on the quest.

She sees her, she knows her, she understands her.

She is here, and Sandy is so very much not alone.

But she is still afraid.

She is as safe as she has ever been, safer than she ever imagined she could be. The world is quiet out here, at least as much as she can hope for. But even with the noise and the chaos softened to a distant, dull murmur, she is still not alone, and so she is still afraid. 

She can’t let go of that. Safe or not, for as long as she’s not alone she will be — no, _must_ be — afraid.

Even with Tripitaka.

Even with _only_ Tripitaka.

Sandy sits down, draws her knees up to her chest, breathes through her mouth, and whispers, “That’s how I knew.”

Tripitaka stays where she is. Standing still, her slight, slender frame seems to tower over Sandy, making her feel even more vulnerable, even more exposed. She’s looking down at her boots, not at her face, and though she must surely be wondering still she does not ask what’s wrong or why Sandy is so strange.

“Okay,” she says instead. She’s speaking slowly, keeping her voice even and her expression blank, careful and quiet and careful and quiet, as she knows she must be when Sandy gets like this. “Knew what, exactly?”

“That it wasn’t real.”

She’s looking down at the earth, trying to keep her eyes unfocused, trying not to see or hear anything that might make her panic. Trying to make her whole body numb. Her nerves are too raw, every sound or shift a catalyst for more discomfort, for more fear or pain; even the soothing in-and-out hum of Tripitaka’s breath makes her own accelerate, anxiety quickening her pulse.

“Okay,” Tripitaka says again, and she doesn’t ask, and she doesn’t push, and somehow that helps.

Sandy swallows, breathes, swallows.

“In Mycelia’s garden,” she explains. “That’s how I knew it wasn’t real. Because I wasn’t alone, and I wasn’t afraid. The world was calm and quiet and it didn’t hurt, and I was calm and quiet and I didn’t hurt. And I wasn’t afraid, even though I wasn’t alone. And so I knew that it couldn’t be real.”

“Oh.”

The shift in Tripitaka’s tone is a tangible thing; though she still can’t bring herself to look up at her, Sandy can feel the softness turning to a sort of sorrow, and perhaps a little to shame. Upset with herself, maybe, for lacking the self-awareness to see through her own illusion as easily as Sandy saw through hers.

Sandy can’t comfort her for that. She doesn’t even know where to begin.

Instead, very softly, she says, “Even when it’s just us, Tripitaka, I’m not alone.”

And she hopes, because it’s all she has, that that will be enough for now.

Tripitaka, who is real and true, who understands her so well, says, “I know.”

And Sandy thinks, breathing through her mouth and hugging her knees, that maybe it doesn’t make her strange or wrong, that maybe it’s not such a terrible thing, to be afraid even of the people she cares about.

“I’m sorry,” she says. And then, because Tripitaka shakes her head, “Thank you.”

Tripitaka laughs. It’s warm, it’s sweet, it’s like the moonlight painting the ground, lighting up a path back towards something more comfortable, something more familiar.

“I should be thanking you,” she says. “You know, for...”

She doesn’t finish.

Sandy lifts her head a little, peers up at Tripitaka through the wandering tendrils of her hair, and says, “For bringing you back?”

“Yeah.” A flush, unmistakable even in the darkness. Shame, deeper and richer than before, and there is a weight of self-loathing in her voice when she says, “I never did thank you for that, did I?”

A strange question. Sandy tilts her head until the world bends sideways.

“I don’t think you got the chance,” she says slowly. “We were fighting for our lives to escape the garden, and then we were separated, and now I’m a demon and you’re a servant. I think…” She wets her lips. “I think this is the first time we’ve been...”

 _Alone_.

She doesn’t say the word.

She can’t.

It still carries so much sourness, so much discomfort. Even the thought of saying it again makes her want to hide, awakens her still-wounded nerves, turns the cool night air into a blade just as crude and jagged as the teeming mass of demon and human bodies, of sensation and sensory overload that lashes her every time she looks around the camp.

“I think so too,” Tripitaka is saying, either oblivious or simply pretending not to notice the way Sandy doesn’t finish. “So, uh, thank you. For pulling me out from under Mycelia’s spell. For bringing me back to myself.”

There is a tremor in her voice now, unhidden and undeniable. Understandable, too, certainly; Sandy remembers very well their reunion in the garden, the way Tripitaka shone with youth and exuberance, allowed for perhaps the first time in her life to be as joyful and carefree as a human girl should be.

“It was necessary,” Sandy says, very quietly. “It brought me no joy to shatter your peace like that, Tripitaka. I hated to do it.”

Much like Tripitaka hates to use the crown sutra, she thinks, gritting her teeth every time she says the words that bring Monkey under control. Even when it’s necessary, even when he’s left her with no other choice, still she has to bite down against the grief, the distress that comes with inflicting such terrible pain on someone she cares about.

She bites down now, too, flushing fire-hot with shame, and says, “Would you really call that peace?”

Another peculiar question; this time, Sandy doesn’t even need to think about it.

“Of course,” she says, furrowing her brow. “You were content, you were free. What is that, if not peace? All the burdens of the world had been lifted from your shoulders, and you had no responsibility except to your own heart.”

Tripitaka sighs unhappily. “Apparently my heart is shallow and vapid.”

Sandy doesn’t understand. “Is that really how you saw yourself then?”

“Didn’t you?”

She tosses the boots to the ground, then throws herself down too, settling beside Sandy with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. A monk’s pose; Sandy recognises it as one the Scholar would assume when he tried to teach her things.

She tries to learn now, somewhat in vain. “Um,” she says. “No?”

Tripitaka glares at her, fire without heat; she is not angry at Sandy for failing to understand, but at herself for being something she seems to think needs explaining and excusing.

“Clearly you didn’t see me well enough,” she spits. “Giggling and gossiping like some silly teenage girl. Like there was nothing more important than some stupid, selfish...” She throws up her hands; Sandy ducks to avoid getting punched in the face. “The world could have fallen to the demons all over again, and I wouldn’t have even cared. How is that not shallow?”

Sandy takes her hands.

Awkward, clumsy, uncomfortable; she still doesn’t really understand how to express herself through touch the way the others do, communicating a thousand feelings through the slightest brush of contact. She can’t do that herself, and so she just emulates, as best she can, the way Tripitaka touches her in similar moments: firmness tempered by tenderness, compassion made strong by passion, by conviction, warming her skin with affection and love and the little fire-sparks that keep her heart beating.

She holds her hands as tight as she can without hurting her, and she shakes her head until she grows dizzy.

“There is nothing shallow in being young,” she says, hoarse with how desperately she means it. “Tripitaka, you and I... we never had the chance to be that way. To be teenage girls, shallow or not. To be young at all, really, and to live in those moments of believing the world truly did centre on us. To open our hearts up for the first time to new feelings.” Her hands, still gripping Tripitaka’s, start to tremble. “You were called to a higher purpose, and I...”

She doesn’t finish.

Tripitaka, still looking anguished, squeezes her hands in turn.

“The world is bigger than me,” she argues. “Bigger than any one of us. I don’t have the freedom to pretend that it’s not.”

“No,” Sandy agrees. “But it’s not shallow to wish that it wasn’t. You were given a chance to be a part of something your life has denied you. It is not shallow or vapid to embrace such a gift.”

She thinks of herself, too, of the burst of panic she felt, the certainty that something was wrong because nothing was. She, who was denied the chance not just to be a teenager but to be a child at all, whose survival instincts are rooted so deeply inside her that even a moment of quiet and peace — a moment of not-alone and not-afraid — is too much to bear.

She wants Tripitaka to understand that it was a blessing to be so thoroughly embraced by her own youth, her own exuberance; she wants her to know that it made her beautiful, that it means her heart is not yet beyond hope.

That one day, when the scrolls are all collected and the world is safe once more, maybe a girl-turned-monk will have the chance to feel those things — shallow or vapid or whatever else her young heart wants — without any fear.

Sandy cannot fathom such a gift for herself. But it fills her with more warmth than she has ever known, to look at Tripitaka and think that one day, perhaps with her help, it may be hers.

She doesn’t know how to express those things.

She is, she realises, overwhelmed all over again.

Even here, just the two of them, it’s too much.

She breathes through her mouth, and she rises on shaky limbs, turning away so that Tripitaka won’t see her growing pale and sick. She hauls her scythe over to the discarded, half-forgotten boots, and — because this is, after all, why they’re here — she starts to dig.

Tripitaka, still seated, watches her with wide, dark-wet eyes.

“Thank you,” she breathes, so soft it could easily be missed.

Sandy keeps her gaze fixed on the shifting earth. Head down, vision much blurrier than it should be, she tries to imagine the smell of smoke, a cooking fire with its crackling sparks and its glowing embers, blocking out all the other sensations.

“Is that why these boots are so important to you?” she asks quietly.

Tripitaka swallows; Sandy doesn’t need to look up to hear the lump catching in her throat, doesn’t need to ask to know why. 

“Those boots should never have existed,” Tripitaka says, with uncharacteristic vehemence. “I have a duty to keep the world in balance. It’s bad enough that I was forced to use the decoy scroll once, but to do it a second time...” She growls low in her throat; Sandy recognises the self-directed frustration, and understands it very well. “I never should have made them, no matter what Monkey said. It’s my responsibility to make sure they don’t hurt anyone else.”

“Ah.” Sandy digs a little deeper. For her sake and for Tripitaka’s, she doesn’t lift her head. “Reclaiming all the burdens of the world once more, to make up for the brief moment you let them go?”

Tripitaka growls again. “I never said that.”

Sandy lets her hair fall into her face, covering up her expression. “I know.”

And she digs a little deeper and pretends that was all that needed to be said.

*

It’s nearly an hour before the boots are fully buried.

Tripitaka is agitated, insistent that every detail be absolutely perfect: that the boots be buried as deep as they can get in the soft earth, that they cover up their tracks and make the ground seem untouched, tamped down and covered with grass and growing things. She pours all of herself into the task, like she really believes she can bury her mistakes by burying the boots that spawned from them.

Sandy doesn’t try to point out the flaw in this plan. She doesn’t say anything at all, only does as she’s told, digging up the dirt then filling it in again, head bowed, breathing through her mouth, holding herself steady.

It’s not so very different from being back in the demons’ camp, she thinks. All of her senses are still vividly attuned to the world around her, alert to every sound, every flicker of light, every shift of the air or the earth.

She doesn’t tell Tripitaka that her intensity is a blast of heat to her already-scorched senses. She thinks of the noise and the chaos waiting for them back at the demons’ camp, and she thinks of the heat in Tripitaka’s eyes, boring into her like a laser, thinks of the way the ground keeps shifting under her boots because Tripitaka won’t stop pacing, because she can’t stay still, because she is an ignited ember, a crackling fireball of energy and urgency, because she—

“I’m sorry.” The word is a sigh. “I’m just making you even more uncomfortable, aren’t I?”

Sandy doesn’t answer the question. “I think we’re just about done here,” she says instead.

She sits down while Tripitaka examines the carefully covered hole, and sets to work cleaning the dirt off her scythe. It smells of cool earth and natural water, its sweetness a comfort after so much time scenting nothing but smoke and sweat and blood. A comfort, too, simply to have the blade under her hand, to caress and care for it as she would if they were still on the quest, watching Pigsy cook the evening meal or Monkey train with his staff.

Before he lost it to Gorm.

Before cooking became the difference between Pigsy’s life and his death.

Before their peaceful little campfire was replaced by two demon armies.

Before the world became a haze of sensation, razing Sandy’s nerves raw.

She closes her eyes, breathes through her mouth, wipes down the blade of her scythe again and again and again—

Stops, jolted by a brush of uninvited contact, of Tripitaka’s hand at her hip.

She’s already sitting when Sandy looks up, close enough that their bodies could touch too if she just shifted slightly, close enough that she can smell the earth on Tripitaka’s borrowed clothes.

“Here,” Tripitaka says, drawing the pouch of Pigsy’s ginger from Sandy’s belt and handing it to her. She’s smiling, but it lacks its usual firelight. “You’re starting to look not-so-good again.”

Sandy accepts the pouch with a sigh, taking a small piece between her teeth and offering the rest to Tripitaka. “Sorry.”

Tripitaka takes a piece as well, probably more out of politeness than any need to occupy herself, then tucks the pouch back into Sandy’s belt; the flutter of her fingers is alarmingly intimate, warmth and tenderness pressed like a kiss to her hipbone, the kind of intimacy that comes with silence and without expectations, perhaps the only kind Sandy’s body is able to endure.

She shivers, touched in a way that can’t be put into words, then swallows without thinking.

The ginger, still mostly whole, sticks in her throat and makes her choke.

The moment ruined, Tripitaka yanks her hand back to whack her on the back. “Chew _then_ swallow, Sandy.”

“Yes.” Sandy coughs again, wishing she had some water. “Sorry, again.”

Tripitaka keeps her hand there while the spasms subside, then tentatively takes it back. Smiling again, and warmer, like she sees in this not another mistake or moment of foolishness, but another reason to adore her.

“I’m starting to think,” she says wryly, “that maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea, for you to pretend that you know anything at all about food.”

Sandy chuckles weakly, then coughs a couple more times. “Food isn’t the problem,” she says when she’s done. “Pigsy covers for me very well in that respect.” She sighs, massaging her sore throat. “It’s the other part that makes it hard. The noise, the bodies, the people. It’s so much, all the time, and I...”

“You just want to be alone.” She sighs. “I know, Sandy. I know.”

Sandy hides her face, feeling small and ashamed. “I feel burned.”

“Yeah.” Another sigh, but this one echoes her smile: sweet and soft. “Do you want me to go back by myself? You could stay out here for a while, all on your own. Catch your breath, if you can, or just be alone.”

It sounds wonderful. And all the more so because Tripitaka is offering it, because she understands how much it would mean. Wonderful, yes, like the fruits in Mycelia’s garden.

But just like the fruit, just like the garden, it’s not real and never will be.

“We can’t.” She closes her eyes, breathes in the taste-scent of damp, mulchy earth. “You’re a servant now. If you return to camp on your own, there will be questions. Perhaps you’d even be punished, and that...”

She couldn’t bear that. Not even for a moment of being truly alone. Not even for a lifetime of it.

Far more than the inevitable assault on her senses when they go back together, she could not bear to be the reason for any kind of suffering on Tripitaka’s part. Bad enough that she must play the cruel, heartless demon, bad enough that she must shout at her and push her around, bark orders and bare her teeth like the nightmare monster she always told herself she wasn’t. Bad enough to have to play the part, but to be the cause of such pain in truth would make her a far worse demon than the role she plays, and she will not allow it.

Certainly not for this.

A whim, a silly, selfish whim. Nothing more. Sandy has spent her whole life suffering when surrounded by people, her whole life training herself to be hyper-aware, hyper-alert, hyper-attuned to every sound, every shift, every soul. It has been the difference between life and death, more times than she can count, the little skitters under her skin when people are close.

It’s not different now just because she can’t disappear.

She just needs to get better at thickening her soft skin.

She just needs to—

“I just want to help,” Tripitaka blurts out, cutting through Sandy’s thoughts with anguish in her voice. “I can’t do anything about Gorm until we find him, and even then it’ll probably be down to Monkey. I can’t do anything about Khan, that’s on Pigsy. And after everything we went through to get the Scroll of Creation, it was as much a decoy as the garden it came from. It’s the only scroll we have, and it’s not even real, and I...”

“You feel helpless.”

She says it quietly, without inflection, but it still makes Tripitaka flinch like she struck her a physical blow. “Yeah, I do.”

Sandy thinks again of Mycelia’s garden, the illusion of peace and perfection. She recalls, with sourness in her stomach, the intense anxiety that washed over her, more and more inescapable the harder she tried to ignore it. She recalls Tripitaka too, giggling and carefree with her new friends, open and happy and light-hearted for the first time since they met.

She recalls the look on her face here tonight, the words ‘shallow’ and ‘vapid’ and the way they turned to venom on her tongue, the way her face scrunched up when she said them, like they were the worst insults she could imagine.

Like it’s something to be proud of, somehow, to carry more weight than she can bear.

“Not every problem is yours to solve,” Sandy says carefully. “You shouldn’t feel like...”

But she doesn’t know how to finish.

“I’m _Tripitaka_.” Her voice cracks on the last syllable; Sandy looks up to find her eyes dark and trembling with tears. “The name holds great power. People have died for it, others might yet still. Kaedo...”

“Kaedo is still alive,” Sandy reminds her, holding on to the memory of a gleaming, glowing Tripitaka floating over to her fire to tell her so. “And in good enough health to defeat Monkey in single combat.”

“Only because I used the sutra,” Tripitaka says bitterly. “It doesn’t change what I did to him.” She shakes her head, looking so lost and hopeless that Sandy forgets her own flayed nerves, forgets her fear and discomfort and sees nothing but her. “I feel like the whole world is spinning out of control, and every time I try to stop it I create something worse.”

Sandy thinks about that.

She thinks, though it hurts to admit, that perhaps Mycelia had the right idea after all. A moment of lifting the heaviest burdens from an exhausted young woman’s shoulders. A moment of simple pleasure, of being shallow and speaking with a youthful heart, vapid or otherwise, and Tripitaka laughed for the first time in months.

False or not, it was no small gift.

She wishes she could have accepted her own gift so easily. Sunlight and song, companionship and creativity, a quiet clearing in a beautiful forest, not alone and not afraid. She wishes she could shut off the parts of herself that feel the world around her so vividly, like grit in an open wound, the parts of her that still cannot bear to be not-alone with someone who fills her with song.

She says, to Tripitaka, “You are a light in this dark world.”

Unhelpful, perhaps, but it is the only truth her scrambled, confused mind can process right now.

Tripitaka looks up at her and says, “I don’t feel very light.”

Sandy climbs to her feet, letting her scythe fall to hang at her side; it keeps her limbs loose, keeps her body relaxed, to hold the weapon so easily, so far from her face.

“Unsurprising,” she muses, almost to herself. “It’s difficult to feel light when the burdens you carry are so heavy.”

Tripitaka does not stand. She stiffens, glaring up at Sandy like she’s said something dreadful. “It sounds like you’d _prefer_ it if I was just a shallow, vapid teenager.”

“I love you as you are,” Sandy says. No hesitation, she doesn’t even stumble over the word or stammer or blush as she usually would. “I believe in you, wholly and completely, and with everything I have in me. I’d like to think this goes without saying by now.” Tripitaka tilts her head, but doesn’t speak, and so Sandy presses on. “But would I prefer for your life to be unburdened? Would I prefer it if you were able to live in peace, surrounded by friends, free to express your heart in whatever way you wish, shallow or vapid or otherwise?” It’s the easiest question in the world. “Absolutely, yes.”

Just as she would prefer for herself the dulled senses of one who did not need their hypersensitivity to stay alive.

But she knows, and Tripitaka knows just as well, that for now both of those things are entirely out of their reach.

Tripitaka must carry the name, and for as long as it is hers she will take all the burdens of the world onto her shoulders; there is nothing Sandy can do about that, only stand by her side with warmth and affection, and take what small pieces Tripitaka allows her to carry sometimes. She can support her, encourage her, love her and believe in her, follow her to the ends of the world and back again, but she cannot tear from her heart the belief that she must be more than she is, that all the world’s injustices are somehow all her fault.

She can only whisper, again and again, that it is not so, mirroring as best she can that aching warmth Tripitaka wears so well when their positions are reversed, and hope that one day the gentler truth will lay down its roots and allow her to rest.

As for herself, she can only endure as she always has before, swallowing down the pain of flayed nerves and razed senses, swallowing down the chaos and the madness and the _toomuch_ that comes with being not-alone, and quietly accepting that this is the price to pay for still being alive.

She’s been flayed by worse before. At least when her own body is the culprit, she knows it’s for the right reasons.

Tripitaka, still quietly absorbing Sandy’s words, the warmth and the affection, the clumsy expression of love for a version of herself that she so clearly hates, finally climbs to her feet.

“You’re too generous to me,” she whispers, and pulls Sandy into a hug so fierce it becomes impossible to breathe.

“You deserve generosity,” Sandy says, feeling her chest start to tighten. “And joy and warmth and lightness in your heart. All these things you would so swiftly dismiss as ‘shallow’ or ‘vapid’, simply because they are born from youth and innocence. They are such precious things, Tripitaka, and you deserve to know them. If I have to be the one to show you... if I have to...”

But that’s as much as she can say, because Tripitaka is still hugging her and there isn’t enough breath left in her to finish.

This close, she can feel every atom in Tripitaka’s body, the marrow in her bones, the blood in her vein; she can hear every beat of her heart, every ripple of her pulse, every hitch in her breathing; she can smell the sweat on her, the emotion too deep to give a voice, can see a thousand colours in the the washed-out seams of her borrowed clothes. It is so much, even this, even—

Even _this_ , an embrace from the most important person in her world, the one who brought her out of the dark, who gave her a purpose, who brought her back to life, even—

Even this, yes.

It is too much, this thing her heart wants and her body can’t bear. She is frozen and unable to breathe, and it should not feel as terrifying to be held by someone she trusts and wants and loves, as it feels to be broken up and swallowed by the seething mass of bodies that make up a demon army. It should not feel as awful, the rough woollen fabric of Tripitaka’s stolen clothes, should not freeze and frighten her to be so close, to smell her warmth, to hear her whispers, her murmurs, her—

She shoves her away.

Tripitaka blinks up at her. Unoffended, perhaps unsurprised. “Too much?”

 _Yes,_ Sandy thinks, gulping air through her mouth, struggling not to panic.

But she won’t say it. Not when her heart yearns for the contact with all the same desperation as her body wants to reject it. Not when she’s using up every ounce of strength she has to keep herself still, inside and out. Not when she knows Tripitaka would give anything to take this burden onto herself as well, an extra weight she cannot and should not carry. Not now, not here, in this place they shouldn’t be, so close to the teeming throng of sensory input. Not when—

“We’ll be missed,” she gets out, only a little squeaky. “We need to go back there.”

 _There_ , where this feeling will be amplified a thousandfold, but at least she will have a good hot fire to hide behind, its hissing and crackling and its flickering lights, the smell of smoke and food and heat.

It won’t protect her, but at least it’s something.

It’s more than she has out here, not-alone and so far from not-afraid.

“Okay,” Tripitaka says, soft and slow and sweet.

She doesn’t hug her again, but she does touch her. A quick squeeze of her hand, the lightest little brush of her thumb over the pulse-point in her wrist, fleeting and delicate and full of empathy; it is nothing, scarcely there at all and then gone completely. It is a moment, a heartbeat, it is _nothing_ —

And yet, brief as it is, it leaves Sandy’s skin burning as hot as a cook’s fire.

*

They are missed, but only by their friends.

The revelries have mostly burned themselves out by the time they creep back to the camp, with soldiers and servants alike noisily sleeping off their indulgences. No doubt General Khan will have much to say about the mess come morning, but for now even her tent is notably silent; the few sentries still at their posts acknowledge Sandy and Tripitaka’s return with barely a nod, then return to sullenly standing watch.

It does nothing to soothe Sandy’s nerves.

Pigsy and Monkey are waiting for them, loitering outside one of the tents Khan ‘liberated’ from Dreglon in her victory, looking just about conspicuous enough that Sandy marvels they haven’t been seen and disciplined.

There is something to be said, she supposes, for being undercover in a camp full of drunken soldiers, even if their snoring is no less an assault to her senses than their cheers and cries and thirst for blood and violence.

“Took your time,” Monkey huffs. To his credit, he keeps his voice low and his body engaged, looking around between each syllable to check for eavesdroppers. “Where in the seven hells have you two been, anyways?”

Tripitaka doesn’t answer, just ushers them all into the tent.

It’s small but relatively private, provided they keep the flap shut, and every inch of space is filled with foodstuffs and cooking utensils. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that the place is a gift from General Khan for her new favourite cook, though Sandy is rather baffled by the logistics of the thing.

“Have we been promoted?” she asks Pigsy, looking around the place with a frown.

He shrugs. “Spoils of war, so I’m told. Turns out Dreglon doesn’t need a cooking tent without an army, so now it’s ours.” He waves a hand, taking in all the shiny new utensils, all the fancy-looking ingredients, all the overcrowded space; he seems excited, perhaps a little in spite of himself. “That’s a proper bloody oven, that is.”

Tripitaka’s eyes light up. “Really?”

“Yup.” He glances back at Sandy, enthusiasm dimming just a bit. “Just, uh... for the love of anything, don’t let that one anywhere near the thing. I’d really prefer not to burn this whole place to the ground five minutes after acquiring it.”

Sandy opens her mouth to protest, then shuts it again with a sigh. “I did apologise for the vegetables, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re just lucky General Khan likes her side dishes mushy.” He looks her over, taking in her pallour, then softens. “Ginger not doing you any good, eh?”

“It’s fine,” Sandy mutters, shrinking down a bit and hugging herself. “I don’t—”

“Yeah, yeah. Here, try some of this.”

And he thrusts a small cup into her hands, steaming with strong-smelling tea.

Sandy frowns. “Are you trying to get me out of your way by poisoning me?”

Pigsy laughter sounds almost pained.

“Sadly, no. It's chamomile.” Off her expression, no less confused for the explanation, he sighs and elaborates: “Good for nerves, so I’ve heard. And you look nervous enough for an army. So how about you stop giving me back-chat and get some of it in you?”

Sandy is not convinced the tea will do any more good than the ginger, ultimately, but it’s a thoughtful gesture from one so overburdened himself and so she accepts it without comment.

Crouched in the corner, as much out of the way as she can get without actually leaving the tent, she bows her head over the cup and breathes in, letting the steam rise to fill her head and loosen her aching muscles. It smells better than the ginger, at least, and with a fractionally smaller chance of choking she’s willing to try anything.

Tripitaka, meanwhile, is still fawning giddily over the oven. “This is perfect!” she cries, bending over to peer into the flames. “How hot do you think you can make it?”

“Hot enough to make this place a fire hazard,” Pigsy shrugs, with another unsubtle glance back at Sandy. “Why? What are you two pyromaniacs planning with my oven?”

Sandy closes her eyes. The tent is _very_ small; filled with the four of them — and none of the others able to keep still, it seems — she feels vividly claustrophobic. Monkey is pacing, restless and bored and irritable, while Tripitaka and Pigsy are practically vibrating with enthusiasm for their new resources. The air seems to vibrate along with them, the smell of cooking thickening it, making it seem unbearably heavy; it settles in her lungs and her belly like bad food, makes her feel ill.

She takes a sip of Pigsy’s tea, breathes the steam out through her mouth and says, on Tripitaka’s behalf, “She thinks we should burn the Scroll of Creation.”

“What!?” This from Monkey, shrill enough to set Sandy’s nerves on fire all over again. “Are you crazy? The only scroll we actually have, and you want to set it on fire?”

“It’s too dangerous,” Tripitaka snaps. “And it’s clearly a fake.”

“Yeah, but it’s _useful_.” Sandy cracks one eye open, watches as Monkey pokes Tripitaka in the chest; he must be feeling combative indeed, to get so aggressively physical with her. “Why are you always in such a rush to get rid of anything that’s even the least bit messy?”

“Did you not see what those boots did to my feet?” Tripitaka counters, shoving him back. “Or what that saw did to my hand? Everything we create with that scroll only causes pain.” She glares at him, the heat behind her eyes far more dizzying than the flames from then oven. “Just because you’re immortal, Monkey, doesn’t mean everyone is.”

Monkey hides his hands behind his back, keeping them out of the way so he won’t be tempted to lash out again. “Is this about the kid?” he demands broodily. “Because he’s fine. You saw him. You _cheated_ for him.”

“Because you would’ve beaten him to a bloody pulp if I hadn’t!” She throws up her hands, catching a couple of hanging saucepans and knocking them noisily against each other; the sound shrieks up and down Sandy’s spine, almost blocking out Tripitaka’s voice as she goes on, still shouting: “Is a little self-control really so much to ask for?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Monkey snarls. His voice is rising now too. “But I won’t. You know why?”

“Because you don’t care what anyone else has to say?”

And so it goes, on and on, louder and louder, worse and worse. It’s more painful, in a way than all the chaos from the camp outside, even at its worst. More painful because they’re her friends, because she cares about them both, because she can’t bear to hear them yell at each other. More painful, too, because the tent is so small, because the sound has nowhere else to go but into her head.

Sandy closes her eyes again, and tries to breathe through the tightening of her chest.

They always clash so violently, Monkey and Tripitaka, when they disagree about something, and it seems tonight they’re even more temperamental than usual. Monkey is still upset about his defeat, perhaps still upset with Tripitaka specifically for the part she played in ensuring it, and of course Tripitaka is still desperate to destroy the scroll, so much that she can’t see anything, convinced in that blind-faith way she has that it will fix all her mistakes and all her problems.

Neither one of them can see anything else. Neither one of them wants to.

Their voices blend, a mangled mess of disagreement that won’t go anywhere and won’t be mended, will only rise higher and louder and worse. Sandy wants to say something, anything, just to make them stop and talk to each other quietly, just to soften their voices and their tempers, just to cool the heat in the air, the heat in her head, the heat blasting its scars across her nerves.

She would give anything to make them stop, to make it all just—

The cup falls from her hands, crashing noisily to the floor.

Hot tea seeps in through the holes in her clothes, scalding, burning, blistering—

The voices shift, blend, mesh; she thinks she hears her name, thinks she hears—

She opens her eyes.

She’s curled up on the floor, though she has no memory of falling over, lying in the pool of spilled, scalding tea, her hands pressed to her ears. Her voice is a strangled pressure in her throat, words she needs to say but can’t, sounds that die before reaching her tongue, choking and choking and—

“Sandy?”

Tripitaka.

At least, she thinks it is. Too high to be Pigsy, too gentle to be Monkey; that should make it obvious, but there have been so many other voices lately, endless and inseparable, she’s not sure she can tell one from another any more.

“I’m sorry,” she hears herself moan, not really at anybody in particular. “But you argue so _loudly_.”

Monkey, unapologetic, snorts and says, “That’s because she doesn’t listen unless I raise my voice.”

Tripitaka glares. She’s holding Sandy by the arms, kind but firm, like she’s trying to ground her.

“Ignore him,” she says, beautifully quiet. “Come on...”

And she helps Sandy to right herself, easing her first to her knees and then her feet, guiding her away from the spilled chamomile like a parent aiding a shell-shocked child. All this, she does without thought, without comment, without judgement, like it’s perfectly normal for a god to need a human’s help with such simple tasks as sitting and standing and moving.

Pigsy, staring mournfully down at the spillage, wails, “Have you made it your life’s work to destroy _everything_ I create?”

Sandy swallows. “I’m sorry.”

Tripitaka looks up at her, then down at the tea, then back at Monkey. “We’ll try and argue more quietly,” she says, soft but very pointed. “If that’ll make things less difficult?”

It won’t.

“You shouldn’t be arguing at all,” Sandy manages; her tongue feels too thick for her mouth, swollen and burned. She doesn’t look at Monkey, but she’s talking to him when she points out, “Tripitaka’s right: the decoy scroll is dangerous. We should at least make an effort to destroy it, before it does something dreadful to someone undeserving.”

“No such thing,” Monkey huffs, spreading his arms to punctuate his point; without his staff, it seems he’s come to depend on gesticulating like a wild thing, much to Tripitaka’s frustration and Sandy’s unease. “Every demon in this camp deserves to—”

“And what about the human servants?” Tripitaka interrupts, voice already sharpening again. “Do you ever think about anything except your—”

“ _Stop_.” Sandy struggles to find her breath. “Please.”

It’s all she can say, but it’s not enough. It’s not, it’s—

It is too much.

Even here, safely tucked away in a small space, no-one around but her friends, the only people in the world she can be not-alone with and not feel so anxious she can’t breathe.

Even here, where she should be getting better.

Even here it is too much, too much, too much.

There’s nothing left of her. No nerve unrazed, no sense unflayed. She is exhausted, she is anxious, she is thoroughly overwhelmed, and her friends, like the unending mass of bodies outside, are suddenly so _much_.

Tripitaka, seeing this, softens a little. “Sandy.”

Monkey, of course, does not. “What do you want me to do?” he demands, all the more angry because he can’t understand her. “She keeps trying to neuter me! Isn’t it enough that I don’t have my staff? Isn’t it enough that I can’t even beat a snotty-nosed little human kid in single combat?” He turns to Tripitaka, arms still spread, muscles bunching. “What more do you want from me, monk?”

“A little awareness of the world around you!” And just like that, Tripitaka’s softness evaporates too; she has the scroll in hand now, and she’s waving it in Monkey’s face like a weapon, like she thinks she can somehow intimidate him into submission. “So you’ve lost your staff. So what? You’re still more powerful than every other human in this place, and half the demons too! Why can’t you swallow your stupid pride for five minutes and just—”

Monkey throws up his hands, cutting her off mid-word. “You see?” he snaps at Sandy. “She doesn’t get it. She’ll never get it.”

So saying, he shoves past Tripitaka and storms out of the tent.

Tripitaka watches him leave, grinding her teeth. “He’s going to get into trouble,” she sighs. “I need to go after him before he does something stupid and blows our cover.”

Sandy breathes desperately through her mouth. “Please do.”

There is a moment shared between them, no more, as Tripitaka hands over the decoy scroll. She’s too angry and frustrated to soften again completely, but she at least tries to make herself unthreatening for Sandy’s sake. Her fingertips brush Sandy’s palm, fleeting and sort of gentle, and her eyes, when she looks up at her, carry sympathy if not quite the sweetness she needs.

“Take care of this,” she urges, lowering her voice as much as she can. “Please?”

Sandy’s skin itches where their hands are touching, as overstimulated as the rest of her even through the barrier of her sleeve.

“Of course,” she manages.

Tripitaka nods, hugs her quickly and painfully, then turns and dashes out after Monkey, taking most of the air from the tent with her.

Sandy doesn’t whimper. She doesn’t have enough breath in her lungs.

Wilfully oblivious, or perhaps simply trying to leaven the moment, Pigsy whacks her on the back.

“Right-o,” he says, sounding as weary as Sandy feels. “You deal with that, and I’ll deal with this.”

And he sets to work mopping up what’s left of his precious chamomile.

Sandy blocks out his grunts of exertion, his dissatisfied muttering. She blocks out the noise from outside as well, as best she can: the snoring soldiers and the sighing servants, the crickets and katydids, the calls of nocturnal creatures in the grass and the air. She blocks out Tripitaka’s footsteps as she scurries away in pursuit of Monkey, her seething anger and his wild frustration. She blocks out everything she can, the thousands upon thousands of big and small sounds, the chaos and madness that has been pulling her senses to pieces ever since she arrived here.

She holds the cursed scroll up to the light, and wonders if it could create a hole deep enough for her to hide in.

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

To her surprise, it is Monkey who apologises.

The morning — and with it, news of Gorm’s imminent arrival — has brightened him considerably. He makes his way across the camp, swaggering and smirking like he owns everything in his path, never mind that he’s supposed to be human. Sandy expects trouble, tenses and braces for it with every step, but apparently his new position as Khan’s personal body servant has given him some freedom of movement because not even Quiver — always ready and eager to antagonise anyone who looks at him sideways — seems content to let him saunter past without even a cursory feint at discipline.

Sandy, standing outside the cooking tent and stirring a pot of gruel, keeps her head down as he approaches.

She’s been outside for a while, banished from the tent by Pigsy after she burned yet another of his offerings for General Khan; the decoy Scroll of Creation remains as stubbornly unburnable as the boots it created, but it seems the same cannot be said for anything else she sets her hand to. After her third failed attempt at helping, Pigsy threw up his hands, threw her out of the tent, and ordered her to instead keep an eye the soldiers’ morning meal.

Already prepared by his loving hand, her only task is to keep it from sitting still for too long — why, she has no idea, but those were her instructions and so she does it without thought or question — and though she’d much prefer the relative shelter of the tent, at least the task gives her ample opportunity to keep her head bowed.

Monkey, in typical fashion, introduces himself by smacking the back of her skull. “Hey, wake up!”

Sandy lifts her head just enough to glower at him. “Easily done,” she mutters sourly. “Haven’t gone to sleep yet.”

“Huh.” He ponders this for a couple of seconds, then shrugs and says, “Go to bed, then, you idiot.”

If she were feeling less volatile, Sandy might laugh at that.

“Perhaps later,” she says instead, and hides her face again.

“Right, right.” She watches his boots as he shuffles his feet, kicking little clouds of dirt onto her feet and the fire. “So, uh...”

Sandy breathes through her mouth, as slowly and steadily as she can. “Have you and Tripitaka settled your differences?”

His growl is all the answer she needs. Her nerves, already seared under the morning sun, already taut and tense from noise and the clamour and the raised voices of training soldiers, tighten all the more. She wishes he would go away and leave her to her so-called ‘cooking’, and then immediately hates herself for wanting that because he is supposed to be her friend.

“She doesn’t get it,” he mutters, sounding exactly like he did last night.

Sandy unfocuses her eyes, watches the colourless swirls of gruel as she stirs and stirs and tries not to think.

“Softly,” she chides him. “We don’t want to be overheard.”

“Let them overhear.” Gritted out through clenched teeth, thick with anger, but he lowers his voice just the same. For her sake, she suspects, and feels strangely touched. “Look. You get it, right?”

Sandy may or may not get it; she has no idea what ‘it’ is. “Perhaps you’d care to enlighten me?”

“You know.” He waves a hand in front of her face, as though testing to see if she really is awake. Sandy swats him away, then flinches when he blurts out, “You get what it’s like to be _helpless_.”

Sandy bites down on her tongue, hard enough that the physical pain stifles the other kind. “You’re not helpless, Monkey.”

“Sure feels like I am.” He sounds so frustrated, voice shot through with self-loathing, that Sandy actually lifts her head to look at him. “So Gorm took the scrolls. Who cares, right? But he took my _staff_ , and that’s...”

 _Ah_.

“You feel like he’s taken some of your power,” Sandy guesses quietly.

He huffs. “I mean, I’m still pretty unbeatable, even without it. But... a little bit, kind of. Maybe.” A moment of floundering bravado, no more, and then he deflates. “Yeah.”

Sandy thinks of her scythe, her cloak, her powers. Thinks of all the little tricks and talents she has for making herself small and unseen. Thinks about how exposed and vulnerable she feels, here in this place where she can’t use any of them.

“I see,” she says, and really means, _yes, I get it_.

Monkey grunts, perhaps hearing that last part. “Tripitaka doesn’t get it,” he gripes. “Doesn’t want to get it, maybe. She doesn’t know how it feels to lose something that’s a part of your strength, you know? And she’s so... she keeps pushing me to be more ‘human’ or whatever. Like we don’t all know that’s just monk-speak for ‘even more helpless than I already am’.”

Sandy doesn’t know what to say to that. It doesn’t help that he’s looking at her like he expects some kind of great wisdom, like maybe he trusts her to understand.

She does, of course. But he’s not the only one.

“Tripitaka is feeling helpless as well,” she tries.

Monkey waves an impatient, dismissive hand. “Sure. But it’s not the same. She’s human. Like, _actually_ human. They’re always helpless.” He leans in, nudges her lightly, then frowns when she tenses. “We’re gods. We’re not used to being out of our depth.”

Sandy does laugh, then, an unpleasant gurgling sound that threatens to shatter into a sob. “I’m very used to it.”

He cocks his head, like the thought really hadn’t occurred to him before now, that this state of heightened anxiety and near-panic might actually be normal for her.

“Huh.”

Sandy doesn’t want to talk about this. She doesn’t want to talk about anything, really; it’s only been a couple of hours since Pigsy lost his temper and banished her out here, but it feels like ten times that long. The sun is hotter than it was yesterday, and with Khan’s Red Guard now working alongside Dreglon’s former Blue Hand, the clamour of training and mock-combat is now double the assault to her senses. She’s had no time to recover, no space for breathing between bouts of chaos and madness and _toomuch_ , all the shouting and swordplay and the smell of sweat, and she is tired and she is _tired_ and she is—

“Did you need something?” she says to Monkey. “Pigsy’s in the tent, if you’re hungry.”

“Huh?” It takes on a different cadence this time, like a question. “No, no. Nothing like that. Just wanted to... um...”

Sandy peers into the pot, watches the swirling gruel. “Does this look burned to you?”

She feels Monkey’s shrug, feels the tension rippling through his body, muscles tightening and relaxing and tightening again, the blood pulsing through his veins, making him strong. This close, she feels like she can sense every atom in his body, every little piece of him a new projectile lodged under her skin.

Hyper-alert, hyper-aware, hypersensitive in the way of too many stimuli and too little sleep, she can hear the soldiers panting and sparring behind him, can hear Quiver barking commands to his recruits. She thinks she can hear Kaedo and Tripitaka, too, all the way on the other side of the camp, plotting and scheming and being young and clever.

She thinks—

“I’m sorry,” Monkey blurts out.

Sandy raises her head. “I’m—”

“No, _I’m_ sorry.” His eyes are warm for once, though they’re the only part of him that are; she can see the muscles in his arms, corded and pulled tight, knows that he’s forcing down his own frustration for her sake, and it touches her more deeply than she can say. “For last night. Yelling at the monk. I mean, not the yelling part... but, you know, uh, doing it in front of you.”

“Oh.” Sandy wishes she still had some of Pigsy’s ginger, or possibly the chamomile tea; they may have done little to ease her discomfort in practical terms, but there was much to be said for the simple task of chewing and swallowing, of drinking and holding the cup, of focusing her body on its simple wants and not its screaming senses. “Um. It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not.” He sighs, and the frustration blooms behind his eyes again, like rain-heavy clouds eclipsing the mid-morning sun. “Look. I’m not sorry we argued. Tripitaka is stubborn and human, and she doesn’t listen even when she knows I’m right. But when you asked us to stop, that was...” He shrugs, like he has no elegant solution. “We should’ve taken it outside or something. For you.”

Sandy swallows, imagines the taste of ginger under her tongue. “You would have probably been caught, if you had. Bad for everyone.”

“Maybe. But who cares, right?” He’s uncharacteristically sober. “This place, all the noise and whatever... I didn’t realise how bad it’s been for you.” He reaches out as though to touch her shoulder, then thinks better of it and clears his throat instead. “I really didn’t. And I know that Tripitaka... I know she says I never think or care about anyone but myself, but...”

His hand is still hovering in the space between them, like it doesn’t really know what to do with itself. Sandy stares at it for a moment, catching her breath with the rhythm of his flexing fingers, then she gently takes him by the wrist and lowers his arm. The rapid thrum of his pulse blocks out a little of the chaos around her, makes it easier to think.

“It’s all right,” she says again. “Really, Monkey. I shouldn’t have let your disagreement affect me so badly. You’re my friends, you and Tripitaka both. I’d trust either of you with my life. I should be able to hold myself together while you try to work out your differences.”

Monkey shakes his head. “We were just angry. Blowing off steam, you know?” He shakes free of her grip then, and finally he does touch her shoulder: a quick squeeze, firm and strong, offering real, earnest comfort. “You were in _pain_.”

Sandy wonders if he realises she still is. Does he think this is something that only exists when she lets herself falter, when her control wavers and she’s curled up in a ball on the tent floor?

“Tripitaka doesn’t understand, either,” she mumbles, floundering to change the subject. “That you feel so helpless without your staff. She doesn’t know, and so she doesn’t understand.”

The redirection works: in the blink of an eye, Monkey is scowling again, all feints at empathy and compassion forgotten in his haste to shine the spotlight back on himself. Sandy feels a loosening in her chest; her breath comes a little easier. As thoughtful as his apology was, it’s not helpful for her to be the centre of someone else’s attention right now. All she wants is to be invisible, to be unseen and unnoticed and hidden away.

“Of course she doesn’t,” Monkey grumbles. “She never bothered to ask.”

“And you never told her,” Sandy points out, voice hitching only slightly.

“That’s not...” His shoulders slump. “Okay, fine. You may have a point.”

Sandy fails to find a smile. “Perhaps you should go and do that now?”

She means, _leave me alone_.

But she can’t say that. She doesn’t want to hurt his feelings when he’s trying so hard to show her kindness, and in any case she knows it wouldn’t matter anyway: even if he does leave, she still won’t be alone.

Her nerves want to scream.

The rest of her wants to cry.

Might even do so, only she knows what Pigsy would have to say if she ruined his gruel with too much salt. She has destroyed so many of his culinary masterpieces already, through her lack of skill or sheer clumsiness; she doesn’t want to destroy anything else.

She doesn’t want...

There are so many things she doesn’t want.

To be here, to be so exposed. To be awake.

To be—

Monkey squeezes her shoulder again. “If I had my way,” he says, low and secretive, “we would’ve busted our way out of here long before now.”

“I know,” Sandy sighs. “But now Gorm’s on his way here, hopefully with the scrolls and your staff.” She knows it’s not what he wants to hear — indeed, it’s really not what she wants to hear either — but: “Tripitaka was right to make us stay.”

“Hmph.”

Sandy supposes that’s as much of a concession as she’s likely to get from him. Emboldened, she tries again. “You should...”

This time, blessedly, he gets it.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going. ‘Talk through our issues like grown-ups’ or whatever, right?” His grip tightens on her shoulder; Sandy imagines his fingers leaving prints on the bone, protection branded under the skin. “I’m just saying. With or without my staff, doesn’t matter: you need someone to help you bust demon heads, you just say the word.”

And he lets go, dancing backwards in what he clearly thinks is a passable impersonation of a human, and the warm air that rushes in to take his place hits Sandy in the face like a blow.

“Thank you, Monkey,” she mumbles.

But by the time she gets the words out through her gritted, chattering teeth, he’s long gone.

*

The next couple of hours are spent feeding the soldiers.

It is awful.

Sandy can’t keep her head down when she’s working with them. She can’t keep her face hidden or her eyes averted or her voice down, can’t keep any part of her out of sight. She’s not a god here, not a wreck of a thing scared of social interaction; she’s supposed to be a demon, she’s supposed to be superior to each and every one of them. She’s supposed to speak with bared teeth and a hungry smile. 

She is supposed to be Lady Wrathbone, culinary artiste and confident professional, and she needs to look every one of those recruits in the eye and make them tremble.

And she does.

And she does, again and again and again, until the pot is empty and their bellies are full, until it’s just Quiver standing in front of her again, looking her up and down with his beady little eyes, wetting his lips and his ridiculous little moustache like he’s giving a serious thought to hanging her over the fire just to see how well she cooks.

“Not bad,” he grunts, with obvious reluctance. “But there’d better be plenty more where this came from. My soldiers—”

“ _General Khan’s_ soldiers,” Sandy interrupts haughtily, “have no fear of going hungry, I assure you. _You_ , on the other hand...”

And she lets the threat hang unfinished, not least because she is too tired and miserable to think of a good punchline.

He cocks his head a little, no doubt scenting her weakness. Well, let him scent it, she thinks; she can no more keep it hidden now than she could last night in the tent among her friends. She wants to crawl into a corner now like she did then, hug herself, shiver and shudder and let all the noise and madness crush her completely; better to die like that and finally get some peace than to live in this constant, unending misery.

It is exhausting, having to hold her head up and keep it there all the time, having to keep a demon’s sneer on her face every time she speaks. It is exhausting, having to keep making eye-contact again and again and again when once would usually be enough to wear her out for a week. It is exhausting, having to make out each voice as they speak to her, to single out just one among the dozens, among the thousands, among the endless ocean of voices and voices and voices.

“Just do your job,” Quiver snaps after a beat. “You give me the teeniest. tiniest little reason, and I’ll make sure it’s your head on the block.”

Sandy doesn’t trust herself to laugh, doesn’t trust herself to smile or sneer or show off her teeth the way she normally would. She holds what little breath she has in her chest, and she says, without inflection, “If you held power enough to execute me, you would have done so long before now, and claimed my cook slave for your own.” 

There must be some grain of truth in that, because he gets angrier. “Why, you little—”

“No.” She brandishes the serving spoon like a weapon, striking him a smart blow across the face. “I grow weary of your posturing, little man. Run along back to your snivelling boys and girls who still believe you hold power, and leave me to my artistry.” She holds up the spoon again, a wordless threat in lieu of the sneer she still can’t muster. “Unless you prefer to explain to General Khan why her soldiers will go without food tonight?”

The look on her face must be more horrifying than she thought, because he actually blanches white. She’s never seen that before, not from him; even when he’s terrified of her he makes a point of trying to save face with bravado. He’ll be doubly dangerous, she’s sure, once he recovers his courage, but for now it’s enough that it cows him into retreat, that he sheathes his sword and lurches away from her.

“Fine, whatever,” he snaps, steeling himself. “But I’ve got my eye on you...”

And his sword too, if his under-the-breath grumblings are anything to go by.

He stomps off, then, spitting on the ground and muttering savagely about all the things he’s going to do to her if she ever drops her guard or turns her back. His voice, low and disgruntled, bleeds into all the other voices, the cheers and cries of the soldiers, the griping and sniping of the servants, the barked-out commands from the captains and the lieutenants, the voices and voices and voices and—

“Get in here, will you?”

—And before Sandy has a chance to sink to her knees under the weight of it all, as her body so desperately wants to do, Pigsy grabs her by the collar and yanks her back into the tent.

It is no less overwhelming inside. He’s been considerably more productive without her around to ruin all his efforts, and it seems he’s spent the whole morning cooking up a storm: the air is thick with steam and smoke, and more new smells than Sandy can take in without gagging.

Feeling sick and dizzy, she mumbles, “Next time, _you_ feed the soldiers and _I’ll_ hide in the tent.”

“Not a bloody chance.” He laughs and claps her roughly on the back. “Not until I can trust you alone with that oven, anyhow. I like this place too much to leave it to your pyromaniacal devices.”

Sandy pouts. “Didn’t burn the scroll, did I?”

“Right. The one thing you were actually _trying_ to burn. Might want to work on your credentials, there.” He pauses, and his features soften into a frown as he gets a good look at her. “I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?”

Sandy doesn’t get the chance to reply. Before she’s even opened her mouth, he’s shoving something into her hands, sweet-smelling and still a little too warm.

“We’ve discussed this,” she says, peering at it curiously. “If you need a taste-tester, it’s better for everyone if you—”

“No taste-testing.” He slaps her back again, not quite so rough this time. “Lavender shortbread, fresh from the oven. They’re for Khan, but I can spare one or two if you think it’ll help.”

“Help with what?” She tosses it from one hand to the other, wincing. “Burning my fingers?”

“Oh, I’m sure you can manage that well enough without my help.” He sighs, tinged with just a flicker of irritation. “The ginger didn’t work, the chamomile didn’t work...”

Sandy holds the thing up to the light, tries to make sense of it. “Work on what?”

“On _you_ , you great bloody goose.” He throws up his hands and turns back to one of his many simmering pots, granting her some blessed privacy to stare and poke at the little biscuit unobserved. “This looking-like-death thing you’ve got going on. We’ve got this great big tent full of herbs and spices and all sorts... gotta be something here that’ll help to settle you down.”

“Oh,” Sandy mumbles. Then, more truthfully, “I don’t understand.”

“Course you don’t. Herbs aren’t just for adding flavour, you know.”

“They’re not?”

Pigsy opens his mouth, then shakes his head and closes it again. 

“Look,” he says, in a voice that makes it clear he’s using up every iota of his waning patience. “I’ve got a full eight-course meal in the works right now, and General Khan likes her meals punctual. We can have a lovely chat about the medicinal use of every herb under the sun once we’re out of here, but for now how about you just eat the bloody shortbread, eh?”

Sandy pokes it again. “I’ll do my best.”

She hunkers down in the least aromatic corner she can find, knees drawn up to her chest, holding the biscuit in both hands and studying it from every possible angle. It smells so sugary, and the pale shortbread is so delicate and crumbly she can barely keep hold of it; she can’t imagine swallowing something so sweet, and definitely not while her nerves and her body are still so much on edge.

Even this, a small and well-meaning morsel, is too much.

Pigsy, returning to his labours with scarcely a backwards glance, has the presence of ten demon soldiers. All on his own he generates enough sensory stimulation for half an army, and the cramped space inside the tent amplifies everything tenfold. Cooking smells, eight courses’ worth of intermingling aromas all churning inside of her, the hissing and crackling of a half-dozen fires, one under each of the pots, one in the oven, probably others hidden away somewhere else, the heat of so much exertion, so much fire, so much food...

Sandy’s head feels like it’s stuffed full. Her stomach, too, before she even takes a bite. She feels—

Does he really think an over-indulgence of sugar will somehow chase all that discomfort away?

A blow to the head would certainly do the trick. She might even welcome it: a dulling of her senses, blessed unconsciousness, vertigo and confusion and the world shrinking down to nothing, nothing, _nothing_.

A blow to the head, yes. But food?

It’s the last thing she wants. Would be the last thing she wanted, even if her insides weren’t feeling so fragile. It’s everywhere, food and food and food, surrounding her on all sides, countless dishes in more colours and condiments than she has ever seen in her life; Pigsy’s culinary talents are unmatched, to be sure, but right now they’re just another level to the sensory assault that Sandy’s been failing to fight off since they joined Khan’s army. Whatever medicinal uses his herbs may have, they certainly won’t help here.

She doesn’t know how to tell him that, though. It’s all he has, food, the one talent he believes is all his own. And in his distracted, grumpy sort of way, she knows that he’s genuinely trying to help.

So she sighs, steels her stomach, and takes the smallest bite she can get away with.

Instantly, her throat closes up. She doesn’t choke — not this time — but she does cough and splutter, loudly enough that Pigsy looks up from his work with a scowl.

“Seriously?”

Sandy swallows with a great deal of effort. “It tastes like soap.”

“Don’t be daft.”

Still, he makes no attempt to take a bite and check for himself.

Sandy sets the shortbread down on the floor, buries her face in her knees and rocks herself a little. Tries, with only minimal success, to block out the clatter of utensils ringing in her ears, the swirling scents assaulting her nose, the heat from the fires burning her skin. This tent is theirs, almost entirely private, it’s supposed to feel like a sanctuary; after so many hours spent outside struggling to make eye-contact with strangers and soldiers, it should be a relief to be in here with only Pigsy.

It should be safe, she should be safe, she should be—

The tent flap is thrown open, sunlight spilling in from outside along with the sound of boots.

Sandy moans to herself, but doesn’t lift her head. Not even when she hears Tripitaka’s voice, not even when she calls her name, soft and gentle, and rising with worry. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t lift her head, doesn’t move.

“Let her be,” Pigsy says in a hushed voice. “She’s been out there all morning, feeding the soldiers. Needs a time-out.”

Tripitaka hums, a sweet musical sound that comes from her chest and not her throat. Sandy can feel her eyes on her, boring into the top of her head, but she ignores it, and eventually the call of more pressing matters drags her attention away. A breath loud enough to maybe be a sigh, and then blessedly she’s talking with Pigsy instead.

“Are you nearly ready?” she asks him, low but urgent. “Khan’s waiting, and we need Gorm’s message.”

This last, as Sandy understands it, is their current mission: to acquire whatever information lies hidden in the missive Gorm sent to Khan ahead of his arrival. Sandy has no part in this mission, except to continue playing the demon and feeding the soldiers, and so she blocks them both out. Pretends, as best she can, that she’s alone here, in this place that smells so strongly of food and people. 

She doesn’t know how long they talk for, or what they discuss. She can’t block them out completely, but their voices fade to a hazy sort of drone, like the echoing chaos from outside. Never silent, not even particularly quiet, but nonsensical and indistinct, the kind of white noise that would creep into her head during the bad days in the sewers, when she was concussed or had one of those headaches that turned the world upside-down and sideways, incoherent but no less horrible for it.

Finally, just when she’s giving serious thought to clawing at her temples, a small hand drops onto her shoulder and Tripitaka’s disembodied voice says, “We’re leaving now, okay?”

“Keep those pots stirred,” Pigsy orders, sharp-tongued but with a characteristic twinkle. “And for pity’s sake, do _not_ burn anything this time.”

Tripitaka huffs an irritable sigh. “Maybe take a nap,” she says to Sandy. “You look—”

“Awful.” She sighs too, but hers is with exhaustion; it makes her chest hurt. “I know.”

“I was going to say ‘tired’.”

“That too.” Eyes squeezed shut, she hugs her knees a little tighter. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“I know.” Tripitaka leans in, presses a soft, lingering kiss to Sandy’s temple. “Just a little bit longer, okay? As soon as we get a look at Gorm’s message, we’ll move.”

That helps. Sandy lifts her head, then lifts her whole body.

“Good,” she says. Then, out of spite because Pigsy is still glaring like he expects her to set fire to the whole tent just by sitting there, she scoops up the lavender shortbread and offers it to Tripitaka. “For you.”

Tripitaka studies it dubiously. “Did you make it yourself?”

“No.”

Predictably, that makes her relax; her face breaks into a relieved grin, and she says, “In that case, thank you!”

And she shoves the little biscuit into her mouth, whole.

Pigsy, unimpressed, mutters, “That’s gratitude for you.”

He’s still grumbling when they leave, and Tripitaka is still chewing. She’s tense and nervous, clad now in the garb of Khan’s valet, but she keeps the discomfort from touching her face; it’s obvious she’s in a hurry, and with good reason, but she never shows force, guiding Pigsy out of the tent with a light hand and a steady voice.

“Come on,” she says, holding the tent flap open with one hand and herding him along with the other. “General Khan isn’t known for her patience. And we don’t...” She breaks off with a frown. “Why does this taste like soap?”

Sandy allows herself a triumphant smirk. “Told you.”

Pigsy, bullied and beleaguered and halfway out the door, throws up his hands, like he really is their cooking slave. “Everyone’s a bloody critic,” he sighs. Then, rather more seriously, “Try and keep this place in one piece while we’re gone.”

“I’ll do my best,” she says, not for the first time.

Going by the look on his face as he leaves, he doesn’t believe it any more than she does.

*

Left by herself in the tent, she is as close to alone as she can hope to get.

Close enough that her breath starts again, almost rhythmic, close enough that her chest doesn’t feel like it’s crushing her. Close enough that the clash of kitchen smells becomes, for a time, the worst of the assaults to her senses. The tent flap is no perfect barrier, but it is more of one than she’s had before; it protects her from the clamour outside, the clanging of swords, the shouts of soldiers, the blood and sweat thickening the air until it’s unbreathable.

In here, with her companions busy elsewhere, there is only herself and a dozen different dishes.

And the dull throbbing in her head, weariness and tension settling like weights behind her eyes.

It is a comfort, the dimming of the world and all its chaos and its madness, the dissolving of all those too-sharp sensations into something she can swallow down with only a small struggle. It is a comfort, yes, but it is a kind of discomfort too, to catch her breath in this almost-empty place, knowing that her companions — her friends — are risking everything right now in pursuit of a mission she did not deserve to be a part of.

Tripitaka and Pigsy and Monkey, even Kaedo, all risking their lives to infiltrate General Khan’s private correspondence, while Sandy cowers in a tent, hiding behind kitchenware, by herself but still not alone enough.

She wonders if this is why they left her out of their plans: the cowering, the uselessness, the way she still doesn’t feel safe enough to draw a full breath. The sickly, ghostly pallour of her skin, the discomfort too vivid to mask even with ginger or lavender or chamomile, the tension in her shoulders, the stiffness of her spine. She can hide well enough behind a demon’s sharp-toothed sneer, her thick accent and hissed commands, but as soon as the façade drops so too does her strength.

Perhaps they think she’s a liability. Perhaps they think she’s a poor liar.

Perhaps, as Pigsy has said many times, they just think she’s a bad cook.

It’s true. She is.

Cooking, much like social interaction, is so overwhelming. There are always so many things happening, and all of them at the same time: so many fires to tend, so many pots and pans filled with so many different ingredients with so many different needs, so much noise and so much to think about all at the same time. She doesn’t understand how Pigsy manages it so effortlessly, how he can fill his head and his nose and his stomach with so many flavours, so many aromas, so many colours and clashes and clamours, and not drown in it all.

Sandy can no more tend more than one fire than she can listen to more than one voice or meet more than one pair of eyes.

Some days, she can scarcely even manage one of those things at a time, much less all. One pot, one voice, one person. Some days even her friends, whose heartbeats she knows as intimately as her own, are too much. She is still getting used to life above ground, where overload like this is what other people call normal; it’s been a long, hard lesson, and she is not done learning it yet.

Small wonder she so often needs to be completely alone.

Small wonder, after a lifetime of it, it’s all she can stand.

She does the best she can with the pots and the fires and food, but of course it’s a hopeless cause. Pigsy must have realised that before he disappeared; if he’d had any other choice she knows he’d never have left her alone with his precious cooking. Sandy doesn’t really know what she’s looking at — she’s barely even wrapped her head around the soldiers’ gruel, and she’s been working with that stuff for nearly two days — and she has no idea know what to prioritise and what to let simmer.

It’s a disaster, as he must have known that it would be, and by the time the tent flap swishes open to reveal a harried-looking Tripitaka, Sandy is almost so grateful for the extra pair of hands she doesn’t even mind being no longer by herself.

“Hey, listen...” Tripitaka starts, then trails off at the sight of Sandy and her too-many charges. “What in the world—?”

Sandy coughs, hoarse with smoke and unapologetically pathetic. “There were a lot of pots,” she explains weakly. “And Pigsy’s instructions weren’t clear.”

“He told you to stir them. That’s pretty clear, Sandy.”

“He didn’t specify in which order. There were a _lot_.”

“Okay.” Her expression, while still lined with tension, gets a little smoother; if Sandy didn’t know better, she’d swear the little monk was trying to smother a laugh. “Okay. Don’t panic. We can fix this...”

And she sets to work seemingly without a thought, like the labyrinth of pots and pans, sweet and savoury, food and not-food, somehow makes perfect sense.

Sandy watches her move, feeling helpless and stupid and utterly out of her depth. The tent seems to have shrunk to half its previous size in the moments since Tripitaka’s return, and she can’t find any air at all. Tripitaka is breathing comfortably enough, loud but unlaboured, but Sandy’s chest and throat won’t open to let her do the same; she feels like she’s hyperventilating, and she doesn’t know why, doesn’t understand, doesn’t—

“There!” And just like that, seemingly in the blink of an eye, it’s all done; Tripitaka steps back from the last of the pots, dusting off her hands and looking very pleased with herself. “That wasn’t so bad.”

Sandy lets out a pitiful whine. “How does this make any sort of sense to you?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Tripitaka says, rather generously. “It just takes practice.”

Admittedly, it is fractionally easier to breathe now that the air is not so badly clogged with smoke. Tripitaka throws open the tent flap to let some fresher air in, and Sandy is blinded for a moment by the sudden burst of sunshine, dizzied by the increased volume of the training soldiers, the cling and clatter, the chaos and the madness and all the things that were dulled just a moment ago. She wonders, eyes closed, breathing roughly, if her nerves will ever recover from this.

She hopes so. She can’t imagine being stuck like this forever, flayed by every sound, sickened by every smell, razed and run ragged by every task, no matter how simple.

“Thank you,” she manages, gulping air through her mouth. “I don’t know why everything is so difficult for me here.”

“It’s not exactly your field of expertise,” Tripitaka points out with a shrug. “I mean, social interaction _and_ cooking?”

Sandy sighs. “It’s possible I should have come up with a better cover story.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” There is an earnest warmth in Tripitaka’s expression; her face is almost entirely lineless by now, almost fully relaxed. Somehow, the task of fixing Sandy’s culinary failures seems to have rejuvenated her. “You’re pretty convincing when you demon up.”

“I’ve had many years of practice,” Sandy reminds her quietly. “At least this time I’m a demon by choice.”

It is the only choice that’s hers, though, and the absence of any other bears down on her like a heavy weight she can’t put down. Unable to leave, unable to disappear or turn to mist or hide, denied the one thing she needs more than anything else in the world, the one thing her body and her flayed nerves crave as desperately as her lungs crave water and air: to be _alone_.

When she was seen as a demon before, in her old life, at least they left her alone. By fear, yes, by horror and disgust, but alone.

Now...

Now she wishes she were a demon more like General Khan, ordering the world to leave her alone with a snap of her fingers.

Tripitaka’s hand finds her shoulder, squeezes tightly. “Soon,” she whispers.

She means _‘soon we’ll get out of here’_ , and she means _‘soon we’ll be back on the quest’_ , and she means _‘soon it’ll just be us, and we’ll understand if you need to run away and be alone for a while’_.

Sandy says, “I hope Pigsy’s all right.”

Tripitaka’s entire demeanour changes. The lines return to her face, anxiety and exhaustion and guilt making her look small and sad and achingly human, and Sandy finds herself overwhelmed by the desire to lean in and brush those lines away with her fingertips or her lips. She wants to ease them, wants to erase them, wants to soften the world not for herself this time but so that Tripitaka might not be so thoroughly worn down by its sharp, unforgiving edges.

“Me too,” Tripitaka says softly. “He’s been in there an hour already, and I...” She wrings her hands. “I wish I could help him. I felt awful, abandoning him like that, but Khan ordered everyone else to...”

She doesn’t finish. Even so, Sandy smiles.

“Another burden?” she asks. “Tripitaka, you can’t hold all of us on your back.”

Tripitaka’s scowl is not unexpected, but that doesn’t stop it from stinging a bit.

“I’m responsible for you,” she shoots back. “All three of you. I’m the reason why you’re all here in the first place. I’m the reason you’re overwhelmed and miserable, I’m the reason Pigsy is stuck in a tent with a demon who has an appetite for more than just his _hors d'oeuvres_.”

Sandy can’t help herself; she snickers. “I’m sure he can handle _that_ well enough.”

“You didn’t see the look on his face.” True enough, but the look on Tripitaka’s speaks loudly enough: it is grave and very serious, and it makes Sandy feel ashamed of her moment of insensitive mirth. “But that’s not the point. Whether or not he can handle it, he doesn’t have a choice. Just like you don’t get to run off into the forest and be alone. Just like Monkey can’t...”

Her voice breaks; she shakes her head and lets the sentence die without an end.

Sandy, remembering her earlier conversation with Monkey, swallows.

“He spoke to you, then?” she presses carefully. “About his feelings of... um...”

 _Helplessness_ , she doesn’t say. There’s enough of that in here already.

“Yeah.” Tripitaka leans in close, letting her head fall to rest against Sandy’s chest. Sandy feels vividly uncomfortable, but she doesn’t move because Tripitaka seems to need the comfort that comes with such closeness. “And that’s another thing that’s on me, isn’t it? I’ve been pushing him so hard to be human, and he was already feeling so weakened and helpless. No wonder he lost his temper with me last night.”

“It’s difficult,” Sandy says, feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. “As you said from the start. This place... it’s a struggle for all of us, and each in our own way. But you...”

Tripitaka tenses, then pulls away. “I know.”

“Do you?” Thankful for the space, Sandy doesn’t try to follow. “You keep trying to take all of our struggles onto yourself, as if you don’t have enough of your own already.”

“I’m _Tripitaka_.” It’s not the first time she’s used that particular argument, like the name somehow makes her the designated bearer of all the world’s troubles. “You’re not just my friends, Sandy, you’re my charges. I’m responsible for you, all three of you, and I—”

“No.” Sandy straightens, finds her courage and a small measure of strength; it is easier like this, redirected at someone more in need than herself. “ _We_ are responsible for _you_.”

Or so it should be.

And perhaps it is enough that she was able to bring Tripitaka back to herself in Mycelia’s garden, that she was able to push past the beatific ideal of a young woman who so desperately needed to be unburdened. Perhaps that alone is enough to make her worthy of being here and being with her.

Because here they are, together, both of them stripped of all the ‘blessings’ that the garden would have offered them. Sandy not-alone and so afraid she feels burned and flayed alive, and Tripitaka so hungry to reclaim the burdens and responsibilities she released for just a moment that she has taken on too much. It is the opposite of what the garden wanted for them, the opposite of what it tried to give.

And perhaps that’s a good thing. The garden was, after all, rotting from the inside, and no doubt its illusions would have swiftly rotted as well, given time enough to grow mould.

A good thing, then, to be free of such tainted blessings. Yes?

Sandy thinks so. Her oversensitised nerves certainly think so.

But looking at Tripitaka now, so desperate to claim a responsibility that will never fit upon her thin human shoulders, Sandy wishes — again — that she could drag her back to that place and fold her into its illusory embrace for all eternity.

Perhaps, she thinks, that is the difference between them.

Mycelia’s gift to Tripitaka was something that should always have been hers. To be unburdened, unfettered, free to be happy and make friends, free to be young and vibrant, shallow and vapid, anything she wanted to be. Free to be _herself_ , and not have to carry the weight of three gods and the fate of the world on her shoulders.

It was a precious gift, no matter its source, and Sandy would walk the whole world to see it given back to her.

But for herself...

Hers was a far murkier gift. Perhaps that’s why her instincts — so overwhelmed then, just as they are here — would not allow her to embrace it.

Tripitaka’s youth was stripped from her by fate, by destiny, by a higher and colder calling.

Sandy’s struggles — her discomfort, her anxiety, the flaying of her nerves and the razing of her senses — are the product of a lifetime of survival. She made them, and they made her. Whatever pain they cause, however brutal, she knows that they have saved her from far worse. She doesn’t know if it would be worth giving them up for a moment of quiet, a moment of companionship and creativity, of contentment and calm and—

And not feeling like _this_.

It angers her that she is so useless here. That she is so easily overwhelmed and overstimulated, that there is so much here to trigger her responses, that she cannot simply shut them off.

It angers her that she can’t be the protector and friend Tripitaka deserves.

And perhaps a little, too, that she can’t be the culinary artiste Pigsy does.

It angers her, in the same way that Monkey’s feelings of helplessness anger him, in the same way that he lashes out in all directions — at the demons, at Kaedo, even at Tripitaka — to try and reclaim some measure of control, of power, of himself. It angers her that she can’t do the same, that she can’t simply crush the feelings of anxiety and panic, that she can’t stop breathing through her mouth, that she can’t be _better_. It angers her that she can no more wreathe her nerves in armour than Monkey can summon his staff from Gorm’s demon hands.

It angers her, yes, that she must always feel like this.

But that feeling got them out of Mycelia’s garden. She, alone out of all of them, saw through the illusion, because that feeling would not be smothered or stifled or silenced. They would not be here, she knows, if she hadn’t felt then the things she feels now, if her nerves hadn’t been flayed, if her senses hadn’t been razed, if she hadn’t felt _like this_.

She knows that this means something. She knows it’s important.

She knows, somewhere deep inside herself, that what makes her useless in here is what saved their lives back there.

She knows—

“Hey.”

Too much, apparently.

Or too loudly, at least.

Tripitaka is looking at her again, soft and sort of sad, like she sees in Sandy something bruised and delicate, like she wants to steal away all of her discomfort and take it into herself instead. Like the human really is responsible for the god, and not the other way around.

Sandy hates that. And she will not allow it.

“You are ours, Tripitaka,” she says, willing her voice to stay stronger than her body. “Just as much as we are yours, you are ours. And we are gods. We can carry our own burdens comfortably enough, and help with yours as well.”

Tripitaka’s smile is strained, but still so radiant. “Even in a place like this?”

Sandy takes her hand, holds it tight, and finds a small, strained smile of her own. “Even in far worse places than this.”

Tripitaka’s smile grows easier, like it’s warmed by the words or the touch.

“Come on,” she says, tugging ever so gently on Sandy’s hand. “Let’s sit down.”

Sandy doesn’t mean to flinch, doesn’t want to flinch, but it happens anyway. Her body, always its own master no matter what she wants or intends, wrenches itself free of Tripitaka’s grip. She stares down at her, far wilder than she should be, here in this place that is almost private, that is almost secluded, that is almost—

But only _almost_.

“Why?” she hears herself rasp. “Why sit when we can stand?”

Why make ourselves even more vulnerable, she really means.

Tripitaka furrows her brow. Not confusion, not like Sandy expects, the usual reaction to her peculiarities and oddness. Not like that moment in Mycelia’s garden — _you’re the strangest person I’ve ever met_ — or even like the first few months of the quest, back when they were all strangers to each other and not even Tripitaka could understand how completely a life lived beneath the ground can effect the life above that comes after.

Not like that, not like then, not like what Sandy has come to think of as her own unique sort of normal. None of that here; Tripitaka’s frown here comes not with confusion or derision, not with the usual failure to understand Sandy’s backwards-sideways-upside-down way of being, but with compassion and empathy and—

And all the things that make Sandy want to rewrite the world for her, so that she might be unburdened.

“Why not?” Tripitaka asks, so gently it hurts. “You look tired. And I’m definitely tired. And we’re as much alone in here as we’re going to be for a good long time. So why not sit down for a bit, try to get comfortable, catch our breath, and just...”

The unvoiced end thrums like a song in Sandy’s chest.

“...unburden?” she finishes in a low, hopeful whisper.

Tripitaka’s smile, no longer strained or small, lights up the whole tent. “Yeah,” she says. “Unburden.”

She takes Sandy’s hand again, firm and quietly encouraging, and this time Sandy doesn’t flinch at all.

*

It is not surprising that the stillness and silence lull Tripitaka to sleep.

Rather more surprising is the way it soothes Sandy’s nerves a bit too.

It is easier to breathe, if only just a little, curled up together in the corner of the tent, their backs pressed against a half-empty bag of flour, surrounded on all sides with foodstuffs of varying kinds. The smell is still so overwhelming, the clash of airy aromas like a constant flood of nausea to the back of Sandy’s mouth, but the silence is more powerful even that that; it drapes itself over their bodies like a shroud, like the whispered words of a magic spell.

They are not completely hidden. There is nowhere in the camp that would allow them to be that. But they are at least mostly out of view from the tent’s entrance, and thus from the mess and chaos of the world outside.

So she hopes, anyway.

With one eye on the shaft of sunlight as it cuts across the floor, the other on Tripitaka, nestled cozily against her like her body is somehow a place of sanctuary, Sandy holds herself completely still, and hopes.

Hopes that it’s enough to keep them safe.

Hopes that _she’s_ enough to keep Tripitaka—

To keep Tripitaka more than simply safe.

Tripitaka’s burdens are so heavy. It’s a particular kind of responsibility, being the one to catch them and hold her as she slips from resting to sleeping, from sitting to slumbering. It’s a particular kind of gift, to be the one allowed to watch, private and reverent and in love, as those burdens fall away from her one by one. To catch the rhythm of her breathing, her heartbeat, her body, to be here beside her, with her, a part of her, and feel her grow lighter without them.

To hold her as she stills, and feel herself grow still as well.

Well, a little closer to it.

Not so much not-still.

Not so much _toomuch_.

And this while here.

This, with her, the two of them together, their bodies touching almost everywhere, so very much not-alone.

So very much.

Tripitaka’s head is a dead weight against her collarbones. Her arm, thrown loosely over Sandy’s waist, feels like a grounding force, a kind of pressure meant to soothe and not smother. Her breathing, slow and even and wholly unburdened, tickles Sandy’s throat, awakens new nerves in a new place, a place far away from the noise, the smell, the need for constant vigilance of the chaos waiting for them outside.

Tripitaka’s eyelids flutter as she dreams. Her lips shape soundless words, painting out the visions in her head, sweet and silent and so, so soft. She shifts, she stretches, she sleeps...

And then, slowly, she smiles.

Sandy watches, awed and infatuated, and wonders what she’s dreaming about.

She wonders what it must feel like, to dream of things that bring smiles instead of screams. She wonders how someone like Tripitaka, who has endured so much and would still willingly take on more, can sleep so deeply and easily and comfortably, smiling and at perfect peace. She wonders how someone so heavily burdened, so much that the exhaustion would drive her to sleep here on the floor of a tent in the middle of the day, can somehow become so weightless in her dreams. No nightmares, no horrors, no whispers or whimpers or whines.

Just Tripitaka, drifting and dreaming, at peace in Sandy’s arms.

Just Tripitaka, believing that this — that _she_ — is a safe place to rest her head, a safe place let go of her burdens, her responsibilities, her everything.

Just Tripitaka, breathing, beautiful and unburdened.

Sandy would give anything to keep her this way, sheltered and protected and warm, loved and loved and loved. To be the source of all those things, to be the reason she can lower her guard and become young and unburdened again, even if just in a moment of rest. To be the reason, as much as she can, that Tripitaka smiles in her sleep.

She thinks, optimistic and growing a little sleepy herself, that maybe there’s a little part of her that feels safer like this too. That maybe the rhythm of Tripitaka’s even breathing balms some of the burns on her frayed, flayed nerves, that maybe the weight of her arm across her midsection helps to still and quiet her hyper-alert senses. That maybe there is comfort to be found in this, her closeness, her warmth and heaviness, her—

Her _presence_.

Sandy is still afraid. She is not alone, and even with Tripitaka — even with _only_ Tripitaka — that is still a frightening, confusing, overwhelming thing.

But there is a kind of comfort in bringing comfort to someone she cares about, warmth in finding herself a source of warmth for someone so important. And it’s not the same as being not-afraid, but it’s almost — sort of, maybe — like not feeling it quite so deeply, not choking on it quite so violently, not watching quite so helplessly as the world spins and churns and tries to throw her off, not trying quite so hard to make sense of a thousand different sensations all at once.

It is still feeling those things, as she always has and probably always will, but not feeling them so _much_.

She is here. She’s not alone and she is still very much afraid, but she is not breathing through her mouth, and the panic that she knows as intimately as her own name is swallowed down and held there, buried in her belly under the lingering aftertaste of ginger and chamomile and lavender.

She can hold herself still, at least, and not twitch or tremble.

She can hold Tripitaka, too, with her arm and with her body.

She can hold on tight to what is important: Tripitaka, who means everything, who has always meant everything, comfortable and unburdened, wrapped around her in sleep.

She can, in holding those things so tight, release her grip a little on the other things.

The tension that has seized and wracked her body for days now, that took hold of her in Mycelia’s garden and only grew worse as she festered in the company of a demon army. The tension, keeping her alive, keeping her in pain, keeping her like this.

The tension—

The tension she lets go, not for herself but for Tripitaka.

Because Tripitaka deserves a soft body for her pillow, warm and comfortable, not twitching and trembling and tense.

Not Sandy.

Not how she is, not how she—

It’s the only way she really knows how to be, trembling and twitching, hard muscle and stiff bone and tension, tension, tension. 

But she softens here, for Tripitaka, and she holds her close with real warmth, real protection, and she reshapes her whole body into a haven, into safety and sanctuary and sweetness, into a place without burdens, where a human who carries too much can sleep and dream and smile like the young and vibrant thing she won’t allow herself to be anywhere else.

Sandy holds that close too: Tripitaka like this, unburdened and wholly at peace, asleep in her arms.

And she holds herself, relaxing breath by breath, until her own head is as heavy as Tripitaka’s.

Until she lets herself believe she’s safe too, enough to let it drop, to let herself drop too, and fall—

And join her, at last, in stillness and silence and sleep.

*

It doesn’t last.

Of course it doesn’t; she never expected it to.

Sandy’s body wakes before her mind, and it wakes with a start. A rustle of motion, barely detected even at the fringes of her awareness, and she’s on her feet before her mind is fully alert. 

She is a demon again, slipping into her skin without thought, bared teeth and a sharp smiling sneer, breathing through her mouth, swallowing down the panic and the disorientation, swallowing down all the pieces of herself that might give away too much, that might reveal the truth:

That she is not a demon, never was a demon.

That her sneer is as false as her stolen name.

That she is not a culinary artiste, that she is not a professional, that she is not confident, courageous, cruel, or any of the other demon-things that come to life in in her voice, her body language, or her bared teeth.

“What is the meaning of this?” she hears herself shout.

It sticks to her teeth, the demon-voice, the demon-smile.

It sticks because it has to, because holding it there is the only thing keeping her alive in this place, the only thing keeping Tripitaka alive, groggy and helpless, mumbling and sighing as she limps back to consciousness somewhere underneath her. Because she is here, and a half-hour’s nap is not enough to mend the scars on her nerves, not enough to cool the burn-marks under her skin, not enough to balm the pain of all the parts that have been flayed and made vulnerable by this place that never sleeps.

Her scythe is out of reach. She has a cleaver in one hand, the other balled in a fist, and she smiles like a demon artiste but her eyes are wide and glaring like a small, scared god.

She expects—

She doesn’t know what she expects. But what she gets—

“Put it away, will you?”

What she gets is _Monkey_ , swaggering into the tent with a grin that puts her demon’s sneer to shame.

Sandy does not move. In her hand, the cleaver twitches ever so slightly. “What are you doing here?”

Monkey blinks.

Pulling herself up into a slightly unsteady sitting position, Tripitaka does too. “Sandy?”

Sandy ignores her. “What are you _doing_ here?”

Her breathing is loud in her ears, echoing the percussive staccato of her heart. Too fast, both of them much too fast. She needs to calm down, she needs to pull herself together, she needs to focus.

It’s just Monkey, she reminds herself, over and over and over. It’s not Khan, it’s not Quiver, it’s just Monkey. They’re not in danger, it’s just Monkey, he’s her friend, her companion, it’s just _Monkey_ —

“Seriously.” He’s staring at her now, like he doesn’t quite know what to do. “You can drop the accent.”

“You—” Sandy swallows, waits for her sluggish mind to wake up. “Oh. Right. Um, sorry.”

And she slowly, slowly, slowly lets go of the smile, the sneer, the safety of a demon’s skin.

“It’s a good question,” Tripitaka says, yawning and stretching. “What _are_ you doing here?”

Monkey shrugs. “Tent was quiet for a while. A human gets worried.”

His grin comes more naturally now, and so too does the little wink he directs at Tripitaka. Sandy watches, still trying to realign her breathing and her heartbeat, still waiting for her drowsy mind to catch up with her hyper-awake body.

Tripitaka huffs and says, “Nice to see you’re trying now, at least.”

And it is predictable, comfortable, the way that Monkey huffs right back at her, the way his grin shifts into a scowl — playful this time, carrying none of the anger from last night — and shoots back, “Hey, I’m not the one sleeping on the job.”

And Tripitaka punches his arm, just as playful, and it is beautiful.

Sandy, still trying to get a grip on herself, breathes shallowly and says, “It’s dangerous for you to be here.”

Monkey flexes. “It’s fine. Stop freaking out.”

Easier said than done. Sandy might laugh, if she wasn’t so busy freaking out.

“If you’re seen...” she whines. “If you’re followed...”

“Seriously. _Relax_.” He waves a hand, stirring up a light breeze that cools the air and some of the sweat pricking Sandy’s brow. “The kid’s standing guard. Might be a little brat, but he’s got a good eye. It’s all good.”

Tripitaka lights up at that, reignited like a dying fire. “Kaedo,” she whispers, with a reverence that seems to touch even Monkey.

The name transforms her, exactly like it did last night after the big fight. It reawakens something inside of her, to remember that he is alive, a different kind of warmth, one that was all but extinguished. To speak his name, knowing that he is still out there and still on their side, that he is well and with them, that she did not kill him.

Tripitaka is so overburdened. Even now, as she wakes fully and climbs to her feet, Sandy can see the sweet solace of sleep draining out of her, can see her shoulders growing stiffer, her spine growing straighter, can see every part of her beginning to brace and bend and bow, readying to take up again all the burdens she believes are hers to bear.

She is so weighed down, so exhausted by the weight of a world that should never have asked her to carry it, and she will not accept the help she knows she needs, even from the gods who love her.

But this...

 _Kaedo_ , and his name is a dozen of those burdens lifted all at once.

The heaviest burden of them all: to have killed another living being.

It weighed on her so heavily that she was very nearly lost, not just to Mycelia’s garden and its too-perfect temptations, but to herself as well. She was so empty, Sandy remembers, before the garden and afterwards.

And even now, as she braces for the labours of being awake again, piling on burden after burden to make up for the weight of the one that was never hers at all.

But it lifts now, like it did when she saw him again for the first time, impossibly alive. It lifts, and Sandy thinks that maybe there is hope yet for the others to lift as well. Hope that she will one day watch the lines fade on Tripitaka’s face for good, that she will one day see her beautiful smile grow easy and comfortable, earnest and real, that she will watch her bask in this lessening of so much weight and so much strain. One burden lifted, just one of so, so many, but if even just one can be taken from her, then perhaps...

It is something to strive for, at least.

To ease them away, one by one, piece by piece, little by little, until the weight is gone. To lift them from her shoulders while she sleeps, wash them from her face when she wakes. To help, as much as she can, as much as Tripitaka will allow, to keep that smile on her face, to keep it burning and glowing. To keep her warm, if she can, and tend that warmth like a cook’s fire.

“I’m glad he’s making himself useful,” Tripitaka says, still smiling, still shining.

“Don’t know about ‘useful’,” Monkey grouches, defensive in the way he always gets when someone else’s talents are in the spotlight. “It’s not like anyone cares about this place anyway.” A pause, and then he’s furrowing his brow again, glancing awkwardly at Sandy. “I mean, except for that creepy moustache guy...”

Sandy almost smiles. “Quiver.” Then, off his confused, indifferent look, she clarifies: “Khan’s lieutenant.”

“Right, him.” He waves, dismissing the name entirely. “He’s really got it in for you. Did you know that?”

Sandy’s teeth sharpen a little in her mouth; envisioning his face, she brushes close to her demon self again.

“He feels threatened,” she explains, keeping it simple for the sake of Monkey’s limited attention span. “Don’t worry about it. I’m handling him.”

Monkey studies her. He’s curious, at least as much as he ever gets about things not directly focused on him, but there’s something else there too, a glimmer or a spark behind his eyes. Sandy doesn’t recognise it, and she doesn’t understand why it makes her insides squirm or why the sensation not as unpleasant as she thinks it should be.

“Good,” he says after a long, intense beat. “Because if you don’t, I’ll have to. And that’d mean blowing my cover. And then the monk will be mad at me. And we don’t want that, do we?”

This last, he aims at Tripitaka, who huffs again in affirmation. “We don’t risk the mission for petty violence, Monkey.” She massages her temples. “We’ve talked about this, many times.”

“It’s not ‘petty violence’,” Monkey retorts, genuinely defensive. “It’s sticking up for a friend.”

And he looks at Sandy like she is somehow something worth risking the mission for.

No matter that she doesn’t need it. No matter that—

And there it is again, that strange squirmy sensation in her stomach, discomfort but not, anxiety but not, overwhelming but—

Well, yes. Still overwhelming.

Still very, very overwhelming.

Her head is filled with white noise, a strange staticky sort of half-sound; it is nothing like the violent clash of swords and shields, boots and bodies and blood, nothing like the blindness of sunlight refracted off polished armour, nothing like the queasiness of too many cooking smells, too many flavours, too many tasks. It is overwhelming, yes, but it is nothing at all like the _toomuch_ that has held her in its claws from the moment she first put on the face of a demon.

A different kind of overwhelming, perhaps an easier kind to swallow. The kind that comes with having friends, with still being on the long, winding path to understanding what that even means. The kind of overwhelmed that comes with being not-alone but not-alone with people who care about her, who would watch her back and protect it — protect _her_ — just as fiercely as she would protect Tripitaka.

Not alone. Still afraid.

Monkey’s grin is hungry, but it’s not the same as it was before. He’s not just looking for an excuse to bust demon heads, not this time; he’s looking for a chance to defend her. He is powerless, just as they all are, to guard her against the horrors inside herself, the flaying of her nerves, the scorching of her senses; he is powerless, and Sandy knows how much he hates being powerless.

Perhaps he feels that this will make him less so. Perhaps he feels a little like the way Sandy felt when she sat and watched Tripitaka sleep, holding her and loving her and knowing that she would never accept such an unburdening if she was awake. Perhaps, like her, Monkey thinks that this is finally something within his power: a name, a face, an enemy he can see and hear and hurt. 

Isn’t that what they all want? For themselves and for each other, isn’t that all they can hope for?

Tripitaka with her burdens, Pigsy with his labours, Monkey with his helplessness. And Sandy...

Sandy, who is as overwhelmed by this — the idea that they might want for her the same thing she wants for them — as she is by all the chaos and madness of a demon army.

It warms her, the bared teeth of Monkey’s hunger, the glowing embers of Tripitaka’s reverence, the soft, sweet way they look at each other and at her. It warms her so much—

It warms her so much she feels burned.

She turns away. Shaking, sweating, swallowing, breathing through her mouth, she feels—

“Hey.”

She feels the weight of Tripitaka’s hand on her arm. A different kind of warmth, a warmth that understands it might be too much for her scorched, sensitive skin to bear, a warmth that promises to cool and retreat if that’s what she needs.

Sandy swallows again, hard. “Thank you,” she rasps, and she doesn’t know what for.

Tripitaka’s expression twitches, like she’s trying to smile and frown at the same time.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

It is a simple question, and a very difficult one.

Sandy thinks of the anxiety she feels in moments like this, the impossibility of being unafraid when she is not alone. She thinks of the chaos outside the tent, lying in wait with sharpened teeth and serrated blades, biding its time for the moment she has to step outside again, the moment she has to lay bare her nerves and open them up to be flayed all over again.

She thinks of how difficult it is to live like this, to be so aware of everything all the time, to know the world only in this way: noise and brightness, too many smells and flavours, everything clashing against everything else and against her, everything and everything and—

Too much.

She thinks of how desperately she wants to be alone.

Tripitaka’s warmth is a holy, radiant light, bathing her and making her feel a little bit holy too. Monkey’s hunger is a shield, protection and power and a strong arm to hold her upright. Pigsy, absent in body but still so much a presence in this place that holds his work, offers nourishment and support for the parts of herself she doesn’t fully understand. Her friends, all of them her friends, and yet still all she wants is to be alone.

Completely alone. Entirely alone. Alone, without Monkey, without Pigsy, without Tripitaka.

 _Alone_ , wholly and completely, where the only sound is her own breathing, her own heartbeat.

She wonders what Tripitaka would say if she told her.

She wonders—

No. She doesn’t need to wonder; she already knows.

And perhaps that’s another side of this, another answer to the simple-difficult question, another little piece of growth that she maybe wasn’t even aware of.

Because, yes, Tripitaka would understand. Even Monkey would, probably. And neither of them would keep her bound to them if they weren’t stuck here.

She could ask. Tomorrow or the next day, once they’re free of this situation and far from this place, she could tell them and they would understand. She would leave, she would run, she would find a place where she was all alone — truly alone, completely alone, alone in that blessed, impossible way her body and spirit are crying for — and when she was done and sated, she would return and they would be there, where she left them, waiting.

They would not call her strange. They would not ask her what was wrong.

They would not try to fix her or change her or make her into something more like them, something easier to understand. They would not suggest that she sand down the razed senses and flayed nerves that kept her alive for so long. They would stoke the fire, cook a meal, and set aside a plate for her. They would say nothing as she slipped away into the darkest parts of the world to be hidden and safe and small. And when she returned, probably many hours later, they would point to her bedroll, maybe smile a bit, and again say nothing.

It’s happened before. It will happen again.

When they’re out of here. When they’re finally, finally free of this place.

When Monkey has his staff and his strength and his confidence back.

When Pigsy is able to cook again for the sheer joy of it, not for survival.

When Tripitaka—

Sandy looks down at her. Still radiant, still glowing and glittering and gleaming, her eyes bright and beautiful as she waits for an answer. One burden lifted, still so many more left to go, but they will get there: together, unalone, they will get there.

And she will blaze just as brightly then as she does now, and Sandy will tremble to look at her, just as she trembles to look at her now, and she will be afraid, endlessly afraid, just as she is now, just as she wants to evade the question, the simple-difficult question that means nothing and everything, just as she wants to run away and disappear and hide and be alone, alone, _alone_ —

She does none of those things. It is enough to know that she could.

And so, not alone and still so much afraid, she lets all those feelings flow like water over her flayed nerves and frayed senses, and she faces her difficulties and her struggles as willingly as Tripitaka carries her burdens.

“Yes,” she says, and breathes and breathes and burns. “I’m okay.”

—


End file.
